Fantasy M&A: the recipe for a pharma champion
Twenty-six mergers that will not happen, five that were mooted, and what each would do to the royalty streams underneath it
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Fund of the week: Athyrium Capital Management
Athyrium Capital Management, LP is a New York healthcare investment manager formed in 2008 by Jeffrey A. Ferrell. It advises funds with more than $4.6B of committed capital across four vintages, and it describes its instrument set as royalties, structured credit, equities and select special situations.
The royalties have
Company of the week: Werewolf
In one hundred days a platform company sold its royalty back to the licensee, sold the platform to a second buyer, and priced itself to a third at roughly the cash the first two produced. The two clinical assets went into a contingent right, carrying a royalty payable to Merck.
Grant now, exercise later: the stand-by licence in royalty financing
A stand-by licence is a licence granted at closing that sits dormant until a default or an insolvency wakes it.
The instrument set: what royalty capital was written as in 2025 and 2026
Two years, forty-nine transactions, thirty-four structures. In 2025 the market did its volume in a converging form. In 2026 it wrote fifteen things it had not written the year before, and each one removes a specific blockage rather than adding a flourish.
Adequate remuneration: compulsory licensing and the pharmaceutical royalty
Article 31(h) requires adequate remuneration in the circumstances of each case, taking into account the economic value of the authorisation. It does not name a base. Every issued licence of the last twenty years has resolved that silence the same way, and the resolution, rather than the headline rate,
The Weekly Term Sheet (2026-W35)
The FDA approved RASONQUE on 26 Aug, starting royalty obligations under a Royalty Pharma synthetic royalty with $500M funded since May, and compelling the first $250M draw on a $750M term loan from the same counterparty. Rates run 4.55% to $2B of annual net sales, 2.50% to $4B,
No leverage: negotiating royalty terms from a position of weakness
Every royalty negotiation is conducted against a clock, and in most of them only one side can see it. In this one both sides can, because the seller filed it.
The CFO guide on this site set out when royalty capital is the right instrument by development stage and what
Fund of the week: Beiersdorf Venture Capital
Beiersdorf Venture Capital is the corporate venture arm of Beiersdorf AG, the Hamburg skin care group behind NIVEA, Eucerin, Hansaplast, La Prairie and tesa.
The unit began life in August 2019 as OSCAR&PAUL, an internal brand-innovation platform named after the company's two founding figures, Paul
Company of the week: Tanabe Pharma
Tanabe is a 348-year-old Japanese drugmaker that a Boston private equity firm bought and is now converting, asset by asset, into a royalty book. In eight months it has sold its largest product, sold a royalty back to its own licensee, and sold its best pipeline asset.