Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the pharmaceutical industry already witnessed a 31% increase in total deal value from $137.1 billion in 2024 to $179.6 billion in 2025 year-to-date (YTD), following a prior year characterized by smaller, bolt-on transactions. While this signals renewed optimism for pharmaceutical M&A activity going into 2026, acquirers are demonstrating increased selectivity, with investment concentrated in a smaller number of acquisitions, says GlobalData, a leading intelligence and productivity platform.
Alison Labya, Senior Pharma Business Fundamentals Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “During H1 2025, drugmakers continued to limit M&A activity to smaller transactions given uncertainty surrounding US President Donald Trump’s policies. As large pharmaceutical companies adapted to Trump’s tariffs and drug pricing policies over the year, deal-making uncertainty began to ease.”
In addition, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) deregulation under the Trump administration, combined with recent interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, alleviated challenges that hindered pharmaceutical companies from signing larger deals. As a result, Q3 2025 witnessed an uptick in large M&A transactions exceeding $5 billion, which were unseen in 2024. These mega-deals drove a 36.7% increase in total M&A deal value from the previous quarter, totaling to $43.2 billion in Q3 2025, according to GlobalData’s M&A Trends in Pharma – Q3 2025 report.
Labya continues: “The pace of large-scale M&A continued into Q4 2025, already surpassing Q3 2025 levels with $67.5 billion in total deal value to date.”
These large deals announced in H2 2025 included Novartis’ $12 billion acquisition of RNA therapeutics developer Avidity Biosciences; Merck & Co’s purchases of Verona Pharma and Cidara Therapeutics for $10 billion and $9.2 billion, respectively; and Genmab’s $8 billion buyout of Merus, a developer of bispecific antibodies targeting oncology indications. Meanwhile, bidding wars emerged in November 2025 between Pfizer and Novo Nordisk for obesity and metabolic diseases drug developer Metsera, and between Alkermes and Lundbeck for sleep disorder biotech Avadel, including its marketed narcolepsy drug Lumryz (sodium oxybate).
Labya concludes: “The uptick in large M&A transactions and bidding wars for Metsera and Avadel announced in H2 2025 reflects a need for large pharmaceutical companies to replenish their pipelines through M&A ahead of looming patent cliffs. In particular, acquirers are shifting their focus towards companies with near-commercial-ready drugs targeting large addressable markets, such as oncology and obesity, and this trend set to continue into 2026.”
For further insights into M&A activity globally in Q3 2025 in the pharma sector, please see GlobalData’s M&A Trends in Pharma – Q3 2025 report.
Note: Includes all announced and completed M&A deals and buy-outs made by private equity firms involving biopharmaceutical companies with drugs headquartered globally that were announced between January 1, 2021, and December 15, 2025. YTD: year-to-date.
