Three deals in three working days. The latest acquisition in European pharmaceuticals, UCB’s €4.4bn agreed offer for Germany’s Schwarz Pharma, replays the same themes: the targets are privately controlled, mid-sized speciality pharma companies. All were under pressure to act.

Altana’s drugs business and Serono, sold to Denmark’s Nycomed and Germany’s Merck respectively, both lacked the pipelines to go it alone. Schwartz, however, has three very promising products in the late stages of development. Its problem was marketing and distributing new treatments. One option is to partner with a bigger company but, as Schwartz found when it licensed Fesoterodine to Pfizer, that typically means that the company which has done all the preparatory work only keeps half of the final reward.