Rome, December 5 - The rumors of an imminent landing of Amazon in the market of retail pharmaceutical. The rumors, which have been circulating for months now, this time refer to contacts between the global e-commerce giant and the executives of major generic drug companies such as Mylan and Sandoz Novartis. To report it, producing a significant rise in the stock exchange of Mylan shares, the broadcaster CNBC was last Friday, referring to sources that, at the moment, are not disclosed.
The news (broadcast also in Italy thanks to a launch of Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor Plus taken up, among others, by newspapers the Republic And the newspaper) would find confirmation in a note from the investment bank Leernik, which states that a senior executive of Sandoz, Peter Goldschmidt, in a recent appointment he would “met and discussed with Amazon plans to enter the healthcare world”.
However, it is not yet clear - underlines CNBC in its report - whether Amazon wants to enter the market as a wholesaler or as a retailer of drugs. On what his real intentions are, the company of Jeff Bezos in fact, it continues to remain extremely buttoned up.
It should be recalled that CNBC itself, not later than three weeks ago, had reported a correspondence with the regulatory authorities from which essentially emerged Amazon's orientation not to "land" in the sector of online sales of prescription drugs, at least in the short term, contradicting the predictions of those who had interpreted the domain registration AmazonRx.com and the request for and obtaining of licenses for the sale of prescription drugs in 13 US states as the unequivocal signs of the will to repeat in the drug sector what has already been achieved in other consumer sectors (cf. RIFday on November 16th).
The hypothesis that Amazon remains on its own at least for the moment is in fact accredited by authoritative operators in the sector, such as Stephen Pessina, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, who expressed his thoughts on the matter at the latest Forbes Healthcare Summit: “I don't think they will jump into an industry as complicated as ours" Pessina said “and that they will eventually use their technology differently.”
In the meantime, news also comes from the USA of the purchase of the health insurance giant Aetna by the CVS pharmacy chain, which has 9,700 pharmacies in the federal territory. The agreement, which our newspaper has already reported extensively in recent months (here And here), is set to reshape the American healthcare industry.
Aetna shareholders will receive $207 per share, of which $145 is in cash. “The union brings together the experience of two great companies. We will create a healthcare platform built on customers” says the CEO of CVS, Larry Merlo. The operation also represents a move to prevent possible Amazon initiatives on the drug market, avoiding the risk of ending up "amazoned", or "amazonizati", a neologism with which US newspapers indicate companies swept away by the apparently unstoppable march of conquest of the markets of the global e-commerce giant.
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