Record year for pharma deals but firms fail to sell mature-drug portfolios

London

IN A record year for healthcare acquisitions, some of the largest pharmaceutical companies tried to sell their portfolios of older drugs - and failed.

Drug companies have agreed to about US$260 billion of deals so far in 2014, the most since at least 2002 and more than twice the volume last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Fuelled by cheap debt, buyers like Actavis and Merck paid substantial premiums amid competition for new drug pipelines.

Meanwhile, sales of mature-drug portfolios - made up of older medicines such as Sanofi's blood thinner Plavix and GlaxoSmithKline's anti-…