10,000 mergers and acquisitions

Oligopoly watch, Monday, November 01, 2004
That's the milestone reached this week by the online database maintained for Levin & Associates, a consulting firm that also produces the Health Care M & A Monthly Newsletter. The company has been tracking such deals since 1993, and while the 200 M&As recorded in the last quarter are pretty minor by comparison with some in past years, they pushed it over the landmark total. The deals tracked include pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology, insurance companies, managed care and other institutions in the health industry, The database is free to register on, though actual searches cost serious money, and are intended for dealmakers in the industry. You can also get a sample newsletter.

The 10,000 figure is staggering, on average almost 1,000 a year. And many of the deals tracked are for hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions. It stands as testimony to the amazing consolidation of the healthcare marketplace, a concentration which seems to be continuing apace. I have occasionally covered the biggest healthcare acquisitions on this site, but I've been aware of all the ones (usually the sub-billion dollar transactions) that I haven't been able to cover. This reshaping of America's most profitable industry takes place with little public notice, even though availability of healthcare and drugs is among the biggest political issues of our time.