Question

Chapter 9

Please answer the following questions for the company (( Pfizer))) This is not a case analysis. there is no case. I just need the questions answered for the company Pfizer.

1. Use Exhibit 9.1 as a decision tree guide on your focal firm. Identify a strategic resource gap to study about the firm. Use the related questions to guide your thinking on the appropriate corporate strategy (build, borrow, or buy) to employ to close this gap and move the company forward.

EXHIBIT 9.1 Guiding Corporate Strategy The Build-Borrow-orBuy Framework Resource Gap Low Low High Low Revisit bulld-borrow-buy options or reformulate strateg How relevant are Interna How close to your resource How well can you integate the target firm? How tradable ey Question are the targeted resources? High Low Strategic Alllance Internal Development Action - Contract Equity Alliance . Jolnt Venture Buy-Borrow- or-Bulld? Bulld Borrow Buy Contractual Alliance Alliance with Equity Source: Adapted from L Capron and W Mitchell 2021 Buld Borro ?, ? By SaMng the Groth Diemma(Boston, MA Harvard Busness Re aw Press)

2. Research what strategic alliances your firm has enter in the past three years. If there are several of these, choose the three you identify as the most important for further analysis. Based on company press releases and business journal reports for each alliance, what do you find to be the main reason the firm entered these alliances?

3. Do you think each of the three alliances achieves the original intent and therefore is successful? Why or why not?

4. Does your firm have an identifiable alliance management organization? Can you find any evidence that this organization improves the likelihood of success for these alliances? What responsibilities does this alliance management organization have in your firm?

5. Has your firm participated in any mergers or acquisitions in the past three years? What was the nature of these actions? Did they result in a consolidation of competitors?

Answer 1

Pfizer is a NY based pharma behemoth, founded by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart back in 1849. Its flagships products include Lipitor, Zithromax, Viagra, Diflucan and many more. It has 9 primary operating divisions, viz. Primary Care, Specialty Care, Oncology, Emerging Markets, Established Products, Consumer Healthcare, Nutrition, Animal Health, and Capsugel.

Given your decision tree guideline, what follows is a cursory look at how Pfizer has decided on its recent acquisitions and alliances and whether the same has paid off or not.

Pfizer’s recent activities (till about 2016) had been largely dominated with the intention of reducing the tax burden on the company through the route of Inversions. The biggest names that were doing the rounds was that of Allergan PLC and AstraZeneca-however both of them had failed since the US treasury made laws against Inversions.

2016 saw two successful acquisitions wherein Pfizer bought Anacor and Medivation. In addition to this, Pfizer also entered into an alliance (asset contribution agreement) with Allogene Thrapeutics in April 2018. Let’s try and put these activities into your decision tree illustration.

Identifying the strategic resource gap | Pfizer already has a sizeable presence in primary care and pediatric treatments, however it does not have any product for the eczema condition. With no new drug approved for this condition by FDA for the last 15 years, Pfizer was looking for a product in this segment.

Internal development relevance is low since developing a new product from scratch will take long years.

Resource partner in this case is Anacor and since in 2016, this was a relatively small biotech firm, Pfizer found it relevant to acquire this firm. There were primarily two main reasons behind this acquisition. One was the drug called Crisaborole which was designed by Anacor and at that time was under approval from FDA. The second reason was Anacore had a long list patent recipes for Boron based drugs. This fell in line with Pfizer’s affinity towards developing oncology related medicines with Boron as its base formula.

The acquisition of Medivation was driven similar kind of motivation where Pfizer wanted to strengthen its product line in the breast cancer category.

The strategic alliance that Pfizer entered with Allogene Thrapeutics is an asset contribution agreement related to allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T) therapy, an investigational immune cell therapy approach to treating cancer.