Yulia Aspinall, PhD
Head of Library and Information Services

Yulia has a PhD in Biology and spent the first 7 years of her career teaching in medical school. She joined  the biopharmaceutical industry in 1994 as a medical rep for Zeneca, then moved to the medical information department. Yulia started her job in CAT in 2000 and currently works as Head of Library, Information Services and Competitive Intelligence. She was involved in Thomson Pharma development, pioneered CI portal and integrated solution for biomedical searches on Datastar for CAT.
Special award - Dialog "Infostar" 2003
(http://quantum.dialog.com/people/infostars/yulia_aspinall.shtml)

Merger mania: Is CI victim, witness or winner?

The Biopharmaceutical industry is well known for it’s multibillion merger and acquisition activities. If you think that M&A activity  was hot in 2005, then it was just lukewarm compared to what transpired in 2006 and 2007. Nearly 300 M&As were initiated and /or completed in 2006, 12 of those exceeded $1billion! From aggressive bidding wars between giant companies  to partnering deals,  especially when focussed on firms with very early stage research or even promising technology platforms, M&A mania has always had a negative image.

In any M&A strategic intelligence is vital and is  driven not just by valuation, but by whether deals get done, how they are financed, how entities are integrated, and whether a buyer and seller even identify each other in the first place. 
Now imagine yourself in the situation when a merger is forced on you and not with your new owner but with another company purchased by the same owner. You didn’t know that it’s coming and, of course,  hadn’t been involved in any intelligence.  Do you feel victimised? - most probably. Are you going to wait a bit longer and see what will happen next? -  most likely. Or maybe you can use this situation for you and your CI team’s benefit and win? - you certainly should try!

Objectives

• To understand the latest pharmaceutical M&A trends
• To see examples of specific interest for biotech operational CI processes and practices
• To take away ideas on how to develop winning CI strategies and move forward in supporting post M&A company goals and vision