Europe's Continental Shift
Executive Summary
The latest three mergers in the drug industry--Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc (to be called Aventis), Synthelabo/Sanofi, and Astra/Zeneca--say more about the sluggish European drug market than they do about drug mergers {per se}. Of them all, only Synthelabo/Sanofi provide an obviously compelling rationale--greater resources to exploit Sanofi's pipeline in the US. Hoechst and R-PR each face a huge growth problem that the merger only complicates.