There are two kinds of senior executive in the pharmaceuticals sector: those who are against mega-mergers, and those who have recently completed or are actively considering doing one.

After a decade of big deals up to the mid-1990s in which many of the world's biggest medicine manufacturers were created - such as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis - there was a period of four quiet years, before the onset of a new wave of consolidation this year.