— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on August 25, Monday.
Welcome to the CNBC Business Daily, I'm Qian Chen.
Chugai Pharma shares in Japan sliding as much 9%.
Reports that Swiss drugmaker Roche is no longer interested in bidding for the remaining 40% of Chugai that it does not already own,
Roche will instead focus on its $8.3 bn acquisition of US biotech firm InterMune.
And unlike many of the recent deals, this Roche Intermune deal is not about .. taxes.
CNBC's Meg Tyrell has this report.
What analysts are saying is this represents a return of big pharma companies buying biotech companies. We've seen a lot of deals in healthcare this year with a focus on tax - so these tax inversion deals with maybe American companies buying European ex-US companies to lower their corporate tax rate. Now this is not that.
This is a company looking to buy growth, looking to buy a product to add to its revenue. And there we have seen some quite big premiums being paid. Earlier this year, Merck bought Idenix for triple its value, for about 4 billion dollars so we've been seeing these deals in biotech. However some folks do say this specific deal had a valuation higher than they expected but that may have been the result of a bidding war.
Last year was a record deal in terms of IPOs and we didn't see quite as many of these traditional pharma buying biotech deals. Just today, Michael Yin, analyst with RBC was saying this could be the sign that this is picking up again and pointed to another company called Intercept which is making a drug for fatty liver disease that could be the next potential target.
I'm Qian Chen, reporting from CNBC's Asian headquarters.
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