BioCentury
ARTICLE | Deals

Sizing up VectivBio’s takeout premium among '23 M&A deals

Many companies with late-stage assets have commanded triple-digit premiums

Though the deal price in Ironwood’s takeout of VectivBio reflected only a modest premium compared with other billion-dollar biopharma deals in 2023, a stock run inflated VectivBio’s price in the weeks ahead of the transaction, cutting the premium down to size.

Among eight biopharma M&A transactions that have commanded a price tag of at least $1 billion in 2023, only the pending takeout of Seagen Inc. (NASDAQ:SGEN) by Pfizer Inc. (NASDAQ:PFE) had a smaller premium, coming in at 33%. However, at $43 billion, that deal was an outlier in terms of absolute size, and it too was preceded by a run-up of the acquired company’s share price, as rumors had circulated for weeks that a takeout was near...