French Pharma Firms "Still Takeover Targets"

Domestic firms account for 35% of sales of the top 10 drug firms inFrance, yet their future is in doubt, says a new report from Datamonitor, available through the Marketletter.

Domestic firms are much smaller than non-French multinationals and they are struggling in an increasingly competitive market, under pressure from government cost-cutting measures. Unless they follow aggressive strategies to increase their critical size and their ability to compete, they are likely to become acquisition targets for the larger non-French multinationals, says the study, and this will weaken the future presence of domestic companies in the French market.