Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
Alexion acquired Portola Pharmaceuticals for $18.00/share in cash, ~$1.41B total; announced May 5, 2020 and completed July 2, 2020 via tender offer (~79.7% of shares tendered) and back-end merger. The deal added Andexxa/Ondexxya (andexanet alfa), the only approved reversal agent for Factor Xa inhibitors (Eliquis, Xarelto), expanding Alexion beyond Soliris into hematology. Activist investor Elliott Management publicly criticized the deal as value-destructive. The thesis ultimately did not hold: andexanet never approached its projected blockbuster sales (peaking near $219M globally in 2024, only ~$81M of it US). Alexion itself was acquired by AstraZeneca (completed July 2021), folding Andexxa into AstraZeneca Rare Disease. The ANNEXA-I confirmatory randomized trial (2024) met its hemostasis endpoint (63.9% vs 52.4% good/excellent hemostasis) but showed materially higher thrombosis (14.6% vs 6.9%) and thrombosis-related deaths. In December 2025 AstraZeneca voluntarily withdrew Andexxa's US biologics license application effective Dec 22-23, 2025 after the FDA concluded its serious thromboembolic risks outweighed its benefit and a path from conditional to traditional approval could not be reached.
Assessment window: 5yr post-close.