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When Japan's largest pharmaceutical player, Takeda Pharmaceutical, expressed interest in acquiring US oncology drug developer Millennium Pharmaceuticals, it came as no surprise to industry aficionados.
"For many years, people anticipated that Japanese pharmaceutical companies would make a move into the US for several reasons: the US is the largest pharmaceutical market, there are significant reimbursement pressures in Japan, the yen has been strong and Japanese companies are well-capitalized," explains Real Leclerc, a managing director on the UBS team that exclusively advised Osaka, Japan-based Takeda.
On April 10, Takeda and Cambridge, Mass.-based Millennium announced an agreement in which the latter would be acquired for $25 per share, or $8.8 billion, in a cash tender offer. When the transaction was completed on May 14, it went down as the fourth-largest biotechnology deal of all time, the biggest Japanese healthcare M&A deal and the third-largest Japanese cross-border M&A mandate, according to Goldman Sachs, the exclusive advisor to Millennium.
Some of Takeda's shareholders, particularly Japanese investors,...