A huge merger in the pharmaceutical market? Report of a merger between AstraZeneca and BMS

If the union is welcomed by the market, and the companies retain their market value in the merger, the company could become a giant with a value of 400 billion dollars. Such a deal could be one of the biggest ever in the pharmaceutical industry. Both companies have been trading on the rise for the past year: BMS shares rose 44% in a year and AstraZeneca 13%, as part of a good 5-year streak.

Antitrust

Antitrust may be a problem, since both companies operate in relatively similar fields. At AstraZeneca, most of the profit comes from the field of cancer drugs, which generated revenues of $25 billion in 2025, out of revenues of approximately $59 billion. It also has significant activity in the fields of cardiology, kidney diseases and metabolism. BMS also has strong activity in the field of cardiology, hematology and oncology, and recorded revenues of a similar amount in 2025 – 48 billion dollars. A merger may require the company to sell some of these products, although most of them are not direct competitors.

AstraZeneca has a broad product pipeline, mainly in the cancer field. BMS has to replace several significant products whose patents are expected to expire in the near future, including Eliquis, a blood thinner to prevent stroke and heart disease, its biggest product today with $14 billion in revenue, and the cancer immunotherapy drug Opdivo. She has put her trust in a small number of new products, including Cobenfy for the treatment of schizophrenia, which originated from the $14 billion purchase of Corona, founded by former Israeli Dafna Zohar, who was recently interviewed by Globes. The product posted $155 million in revenue in 2025, its first full year of revenue, and it’s still unclear whether it will be a bestseller.

Last February, AstraZeneca was also listed on the New York Stock Exchange to strengthen its position in the American market. It already has an extensive production activity in the US, and has been strengthening it significantly in recent years, partly because of US President Donald Trump’s demands that pharmaceutical companies that wish to market in the US transfer more of their production capacity to it. An acquisition of BMS could allow it to gain an even greater US presence, at high speed. For Bristol, this is an opportunity to avoid over-reliance on an uncertain product pipeline.

Both companies have made acquisitions in recent years, but not huge mergers. For BMS, Corona was one of the largest acquisitions, at $14 billion, and in 2020 it acquired MyoKardia in the field of cardiology, which gave it a drug considered one of its strengths. In 2021, AstraZeneca acquired Exelion in the field of rare diseases for 40 billion dollars, and since then it has not made a purchase of a similar size.

The companies have not yet responded to the news in the “Financial Times”, and their shares have not yet had time to respond to the news.

“The companies don’t play in the same league”

Uri Hershkowitz, manager of the hedge fund Bennu, sees the merger as basically good news for both companies, and especially for BMS. “There is a thesis according to which most mergers fail. In the pharmaceutical industry, they usually succeed. You can easily save, even in headquarters positions, also in factories – the reactors (the production facilities of the biological drugs) are moved to another floor in the new factory and the factory is sold for good money. The same goes for the sales team. Instead of one drug, he will sell two, many salespeople can be saved. This is a 15% reduction in expenses in a merger between equals.”

What about antitrust?
“In such a merger, an instruction to sell some of the properties is expected, but if there are two properties in the same category, the good one is kept and the less good one is sold for full money.” But Hershkowitz qualifies: “The two companies are not considered to be playing in the same league. AstraZeneca is considered more successful, better managed, with a richer and better product pipeline. Their CEO, Pascal Soiro, is considered a super CEO in the current pharmaceutical industry.

“AstraZeneca investors can ask themselves, what does such a successful company have to do with BMS, which has also had recent successes but is considered a less strong company with a thinner product pipeline. Investors may see this as pressure that AstraZeneca is transmitting, against the background of the failure it registered last week with the drug Wainua for the heart disease AATR Amyloidosis. A small purchase that the company made two weeks ago, in the amount of half a billion dollars, also conveyed to us that the company is not calm about its future.

AstraZeneca, which recorded revenues of $58 billion in 2025, gave very aggressive forecasts for the coming years: $62 billion in 2026, $66.8 billion in 2027, and about $80 billion in 2030. But if they buy BMS, they can do nothing and start all over again. This could be one of the considerations, and perhaps the market will fear that this is one of the considerations, and therefore In the near term, we expect to see BMS’s stock rise and AstraZeneca’s stock fall.”