CROh-my-goodness!

Well, it looks like Christmas came early for Covance, landing a $2.2 billion deal with sanofi-aventis (more on that here). I don’t think I’m anywhere near alone when I say, “Didn’t see that one coming!”

Whether this is a sign of much larger things to come in terms of the contract research space and continued pharma and biotech outsourcing, only time will tell. But I’m guessing we’ll see more deals and even bigger dollar amounts before long.

By the way, maybe it’s me just showing my age (42, for the record), but I still have trouble wrapping my mind around multibillion-dollar collaborations. Buying a whole company for billions…well, I’ve gotten used to that, and understand it totally. But the world is moving fast, because I don’t recall too many deals (aside from acquisitions) going into the billions-and-billions of dollars territory until pretty recently.

Anyway, more details on, and insights into, the Covance/sanofi-aventis deal from us in the weeks to come.