Merger and acquisition processes in the pharmaceutical market: key trends and prospects

The pharmaceutical market is a complex mechanism for the formation and development of its constituent elements, which every year shows a positive trend in increasing the growth rate of its volumes, both in value and in physical terms. The study of mergers/acquisitions (hereinafter referred to as M&A “mergers and acquisitions”) in the pharmaceutical market is a promising area for research, since the structural transformations that inevitably occur as a result of these transformations create a new competitive environment, affect the current market situation, as a result of which changes the pricing policy of companies, which ultimately affects the level of effective demand of consumers. Changes in the level of effective demand, in turn, along with the existing structure of morbidity, affect the level of availability of medicines. The study assesses the main trends in M&A processes in the global and Russian pharmaceutical markets. It was revealed that the specifics of the processes of mergers and acquisitions in the Russian market are mainly associated with activity in the wholesale and retail segments. Although, integration in the manufacturing segment also takes place. It has been established that the trend of vertical integration has most clearly manifested itself in the Russian market. This is due to the desire of Russian companies to minimize their costs, to combine capital with the capital of a partner for efficient spending, and as a result, to win a large part of the market. According to the statistical results, data on the number of companies that have passed the path of vertical integration changed, then the indicators deteriorated sharply, due to the crisis of the economy as a whole, then improved, due to the stability of the economic indicators.