Bio business food chain in action

General article detailing the well-known trend of big pharma buying small to mid biotech.

Stats that justifies the blog posting:

"the average biotech take-out premium has jumped to 62 percent this year from an average of 49 percent over the past eight years."

"average returns from trade sales are now around 2-1/2 times higher than those from IPOs."

Interestingly, the article highlights two deal examples that have totally contradictory rationale: Shire - definitely a products company vs. Sirna, which seems to me to be more of an enabling technology company (or perhaps even an IP play.)