Remember all that pharma M&A action from the first half of the year? Pfizer-Wyeth! Merck-Schering! Roche-Genentech! But with things rather quiet at the moment on the pharma megamerger front, let’s pause to consider what might may be in store: Pharma spinoffs. “The industry will go through more cycles of consolidation, but eventually these very large companies will break up again into smaller businesses,” Wyeth’s head of business development Thomas Hofstaetter said at a conference yesterday, according to Dow Jones Newswires reporter Peter Loftus. Hofstaetter said some of those independent operating units Pfizer and others have created could wind up being worth more as stand-alone entities. Later

in the day, Pfizer CFO Frank D’Amelio said the first priority after the Wyeth deal closes will be getting the business units operationaly sound. “Then we’ll see what the options are in terms of value creation,” he added. This kind of back-and-forth between acquisition and spinoff is natural enough. For an example, look no further than Pfizer’s own sale a few years back of its consumer products division to J&J — and the company’s move back into the consumer health business via its acquision of Wyeth. Photo by Mykl Roventine via Flickr

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Will Pharma Spinoffs Follow Pharma Mergers?