About 82% of Canadians were already happy with Obama [1] in February, but this week I suspect he converted a few of the holdouts with his call for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making [2]. All was subsequently peaceful and happy in the U.S. of A., leading to M&A rapprochement between Roche and Genentech and to Gilead Sciences riding to CV Therapeutics’ rescue [3].
M&A developments were not so peaceful and happy in Canada [4], where the Special Committee formed by Patheon’s Board called a takeover bid by JLL Partners [5] “substantially undervalued, opportunistic and structurally coercive.” Merck and Schering-Plough did a friendly deal this week, though, that will include their Canadian operations [6].
Across the pond, a proposal for a £1 billion fund for university spin-outs was not restricted to biotechnology [7]; but that’s fine with me. Any developments that emphasize common ground among biotech, cleantech and high-tech is a good thing in my book.
Two of our trends in 2009 topics [8] saw interesting action this week as well, with Walmart entering the electronic medical records game [9], and a follow-on biologics bill introduced in Congress [10].
Read more about these developments, as well as the Monday Deal Review [11], the Wednesday Brain Dump [12] and the Friday Science Review [13] at the Cross-Border Biotech Blog [14], which hit its 100th post [15] and became 1/40th the size of Slaw [16] this week.