Investment Banks Waiting for Pfizer to Show Them the Money

A reader called my attention to this alarming but weirdly fascinating graphic over at the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog. It's a March tournament bracket for the drug industry, but the winning team takes over the loser. Of course, the thing that makes it so spooky is that all the second-round matchups they show are fairly plausible (and have, in fact, all been rumored at one time or another).

The whole thing is prompted by some investment banks calling for Pfizer (PFE) to do some big deal to shore up their numbers, which is just the sort of thing you'd expect a bunch of investment bankers to come up with. Business is slow these days, you know, and a big ol' deal would be just what the doctor ordered.

If you work through the whole thing, you end up with. . .well, you end up with Pfizer most of the time. It's like one of those pool sheets where you find yourself putting money on a team you don't really care for. The comments to the post are worth reading, too - my favorite line might be "Problem with Pfizer is that they haven’t the foggiest idea about what they are doing. . ."

Comments

[reader]

I have to agree with the article. I also have to agree with something else I have heard, and that is there should be someone with a medical research background running PFE rather than a lawyer.