Pharma Buyout Tabled

FLICKR, IMAGES MONEYThe impending acquisition that has kept those in the pharmaceutical industry at the edge of their seats for the last several weeks is not going to happen after all: following multiple rejected offers, Pfizer said Monday (May 26) that it will no longer pursue the purchase of AstraZeneca.

“We are now moving on,” Pfizer CEO Ian Read told The Wall Street Journal. But he remained vague about his firm’s future plans: “We have no idea whether we’d be interested in AstraZeneca at any point in the future.”

For now, AstraZeneca executives—who had rejected Pfizer’s most recent acquisition bid of around $119 billion in cash and stock, according to The New York Times’ DealBook—are breathing a sigh of relief. “We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company,” AstraZeneca’s Chairman Leif Johansson said in a statement...