The two partners announced the news at the signing ceremony held by Merck Research Institute in Ravi, New Jersey, USA. Chairman of the board of directors of Merck Co., Ltd. Ke Jiarui; History of President of Merck Global Human Health Department; Feng Naxi, President of Merck East China District; Ren Jinsheng, Chairman and CEO of Voice Group; And Dr. Zhang, President of Xiansheng Technology, attended the signing ceremony.
Member the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Secretary jiangsu provincial party committee and Director of the Standing Committee of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress Luo Zhijun attended the signing ceremony.
This novel and creative way of cooperation will bring together the rich R&D and sales experience and resources of a multinational pharmaceutical company and a leading pharmaceutical company in China, so as to achieve the goal of establishing a strategic partnership between the two sides. The cooperation will include product research and development, registration, manufacturing and sales of both parties. In addition, in the initial stage of cooperation, we will focus on leading brand drugs in the field of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
According to the cooperation agreement between the two companies, the two companies will provide the joint venture company with their selected brands and generic drug combinations in the field of cardiovascular diseases, including Merck/Merck &; Reg (simvastatin), Kosuya &; Reg (losartan) and renitec &；; Reg from simcere (enalapril) and Cinta (amlodipine besylate) and Sufutan (rosuvastatin).
"Merck is honored to cooperate with the voice. Xiansheng is a leading pharmaceutical company in China. Merck and Xiansheng have the same mission, which is to promote the development of medical and health undertakings in China. " Shi said, "At the same time, cooperation is also an important step for Merck to expand its business strategy in China, which coincides with the goal of the China government to improve the accessibility of quality drugs."
"Today's cooperation is another important milestone in Saisen's unremitting pursuit of improving patients' quality of life by providing innovative drugs. Ren Jinsheng said, "The purpose of this innovative cooperation is to meet the enormous challenges of China's medical system and meet the needs of China patients and other medical stakeholders. "
"The cooperation between Xiansheng and Merck is not only of strategic significance to both companies, but also a landmark event in the biopharmaceutical industry in Jiangsu Province." Luo Zhijun, secretary of jiangsu provincial party committee and director of the Standing Committee of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress, pointed out, "The biopharmaceutical industry is a strategic emerging industry that Jiangsu Province focuses on. The cooperation between Merck and Xiansheng will inject fresh impetus into the development of the whole industry and help Jiangsu provide more high-quality drugs for China and the world. "
The establishment of a joint venture will depend on the finalization of the terms of cooperation between the two parties.
In September 2009, Feng Naxi, who just took over the China market for nine months, said in an interview with the media that for R&D company, the development speed of China market is faster than anywhere else. Among the most valuable markets in the world, China will become the third in three years and the largest vaccine market in the world by 2020.
Despite the high evaluation of China market, the development pace of Merck, which has been in China for 20 years, is not significant, which is due to its unsatisfactory channel promotion and high drug price.
In order to change this situation, Merck took the initiative to reduce the price of drugs for cardiovascular diseases to 20 10 by 52%, becoming the first foreign-funded original drug to enter the national list of essential drugs. Feng Naxi admits that this will greatly reduce profits, but in exchange for more coverage of medical institutions, especially grassroots community health centers. The planned joint venture will focus on generic drugs with relatively low prices, which will undoubtedly help Merck achieve wider coverage.
The courseware of Merck 20 10 shows that its business focus is to expand the use of products in primary medical institutions, especially for chronic diseases that need long-term use; Ensure the market access of products in every province and city, continue to speed up market development and multi-channel market education, so that products can be effectively distributed to the vast market; At the same time, explore the establishment of business partner cooperation mode to improve product coverage.
Feng Naxi said that in the next three years, Merck will continue to deepen the China market and expand its new business capabilities through three channels: First, strengthen its own business; Second, look for strategic partners; Third, mergers and acquisitions.
The cooperation with simcere is Merck's second development plan while strengthening its own business.
Feng Naxi's development strategy for the next three years also includes the arrangement based on the unbalanced development between the eastern and western parts of China. "We have established ten regions according to the urban clusters in various regions of China, and established the regional general manager responsibility system respectively. It should be said that we are the first multinational pharmaceutical company to deploy nationwide. "
I'm afraid Feng Naxi can't just expect a simcere to make these ten regions play the expected role. In the future market breakthrough, he will make more use of M&A to achieve rapid scale expansion, so as to grasp the huge business opportunities created by China medical reform.
"China wants to establish a perfect medical and health security system, which is not available in other countries in the world. Medical reform in developing countries is usually to establish a preliminary medical system, while China has begun to establish a medical system that basically covers the whole country, especially the national essential drug system, with the aim of solving the accessibility of drugs, improving the coverage of medical insurance, and narrowing the differences in medical environment between the east and the west. " Feng Naxi said.
Like Merck, many multinational pharmaceutical giants have taken a fancy to the business opportunities of medical reform in China. It is conceivable that the competition will be more intense in the future. Whether Merck can change the long-term tepid situation depends on how brave it is to break through itself.
Merck is not the first multinational pharmaceutical company to establish a joint venture with a domestic pharmaceutical company. Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, signed a letter of intent with Haizheng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and the two sides will form a joint venture company to realize the wider commercialization of related drugs through a global marketing platform. Before Pfizer, Novartis, another pharmaceutical giant, also announced the completion of the joint venture with China vaccine company Zhejiang Tianyuan Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
Why do domestic pharmaceutical companies attract multinational pharmaceutical giants to establish joint ventures? Dai Haosen, a medical expert, told reporters that the most important purpose of cooperation between multinational pharmaceutical companies and China companies is to occupy a larger share in the China market. Because multinational pharmaceutical companies are in a leading position in technology and products, they are not as good as domestic enterprises in domestic market expansion and understanding of China policies. Moreover, cooperating with domestic enterprises in production and sales can reduce the cost of multinational pharmaceutical companies, and for domestic enterprises, they can also learn from foreign advanced technology and management experience.
At the same time, an industry insider said that in the past, if multinational pharmaceutical companies wanted to continue to grow and develop, most of them would adopt mergers and acquisitions, but there were not many good companies worth acquiring in the market, and they might not be able to acquire them. Therefore, large multinational pharmaceutical companies began to gradually replace "acquisition" with "investment".
Guo Fanli, a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry of China Investment Consulting Co., pointed out that Merck chose to set up a joint venture with Synvoice, on the one hand, because their businesses are similar, and on the other hand, because Synvoice has accumulated many market channels and government relations, which are the favorite places for foreign-funded enterprises. With these relationships and channels, foreign pharmaceutical companies will enter the domestic market more smoothly, and this kind of cooperation can also improve their performance with the help of Merck's brand effect on the voice. Guo Fanli pointed out that in addition to the cooperation between Merck and Voice, more and more foreign-funded enterprises tend to establish joint ventures with domestic pharmaceutical companies, and Pfizer and Haizheng have also signed cooperation agreements to establish joint ventures. The acceleration of cooperation between foreign pharmaceutical companies and domestic pharmaceutical companies has many influences, the most important of which is that foreign pharmaceutical companies have taken a fancy to the 850 billion cakes of China's new medical reform.
In addition, another reason is that in the next few years, large foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers will enter the patent expiration tide. For example, the patent of Lipitor, a heavyweight drug owned by Pfizer, is about to expire, and Novartis will lose the patent rights of the best-selling antihypertensive drug Diovan and the anticancer drug Gleevec in 20 12 and 20 15. When the patent expires, these pharmaceutical companies urgently need to acquire new enterprises to smooth their performance.
On the other hand, foreign-funded enterprises will encounter some difficulties and obstacles in the process of entering the domestic market, such as channel difficulties and policy difficulties, and merging domestic pharmaceutical companies and establishing joint ventures can alleviate these difficulties to the greatest extent. For example, in the joint venture project between Novartis and Zhejiang Tianyuan, Novartis quickly entered the domestic pharmaceutical market by relying on the long-term accumulated channels of Zhejiang Tianyuan and good relations with the government.
However, the merger and acquisition of China pharmaceutical companies by foreign pharmaceutical companies is still a mixed blessing for China pharmaceutical industry. On the one hand, it can stimulate the domestic pharmaceutical industry to accelerate the upgrade. Foreign-funded pharmaceutical companies have advantages in technology and drug innovation. The merger of foreign-funded pharmaceutical companies with China pharmaceutical companies is conducive to promoting the technological upgrading and technological innovation capacity building of the entire pharmaceutical industry in China. On the one hand, the disadvantage lies in reducing the market share of domestic pharmaceutical companies. The merger and acquisition of China pharmaceutical companies by foreign pharmaceutical companies has not only seized the market of domestic pharmaceutical companies, but also seized some resources of domestic pharmaceutical companies, which will further reduce the market share of domestic pharmaceutical companies.
Simcere said in an interview with reporters yesterday that the establishment of the joint venture company will pool the R&D and sales experience and resources of both partners to achieve the goal of establishing a strategic partnership between the two sides.
It is understood that the cooperation will include product research and development, registration, manufacturing and sales of both parties. In addition, in the initial stage of cooperation, we will focus on leading brand drugs in the field of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. However, since the details of the specific cooperation have yet to be finalized by both parties, the scale of the joint venture company's funds will not be disclosed until August at the earliest.
According to public information, Merck has been in China for 20 years, but its development is slow. In addition to the high drug price, another important reason that hinders its development is that its sales channels are not ideal.
In order to change this situation, Merck took the initiative to reduce the price of a drug for treating cardiovascular diseases by 52%, becoming the first foreign-funded original drug to enter the national list of essential drugs. According to Southern Reporter, the joint venture between Merck and Xiansheng Technology will have a variety of cooperative operations.
Shi, President of Merck's Global Human Health Department, regards this cooperation with the voice as an important step for Merck to expand its business strategy in China.
According to public information, Voice is a China pharmaceutical company engaged in the research and development of innovative drugs, and it is also the first generic drug listed. Now it is a listed company in NYSE, with a sales team of more than 800 people, more than 65,438+000 strategic partners and more than 65,438+0,500 distributors in China. The products are marketed to more than 4,000 hospitals and 70,000 pharmacies.
According to insiders, the huge sales network of the voice was very attractive to Merck, which was in urgent need of channels in the China market at that time. Merck can provide intellectual and financial support for Xiansheng in the research and development of innovative drugs and the first imitation of generic drugs.
It is worth mentioning that Zhang, who became the voice of C E O, previously worked in Merck, and Zhang served as the president of China District in Merck from 2007 to 2008. The joint venture between the two parties is also widely regarded by the industry as "a curve returning to Merck".
With a number of multinational pharmaceutical companies holding hands with leading domestic pharmaceutical companies, why multinational pharmaceutical companies have set up joint ventures in China has become the focus of attention in the industry. Some analysts said that at present, multinational pharmaceutical companies are facing two major crises: the expiration of patents and the price reduction of original drugs. In this case, acquiring or joining hands with high-quality local pharmaceutical companies to gain market expansion is becoming their new strategy in China. "Merck and Xiansheng's joint venture, Pfizer and Haizheng's joint venture, this wave of joint venture tide is different from Xi 'an Janssen 1985 and Hanjiang Pharmaceutical Factory's joint venture. The joint venture between Xi 'an Rangsang and Hanjiang Pharmaceutical Factory is more about obtaining a "license" to develop the pharmaceutical market in China conveniently and legally. The current two joint venture cases are to further expand the pharmaceutical market in China. " An industry veteran in Beijing said.
It is understood that there are two biggest challenges for multinational pharmaceutical companies to expand their business in China: First, the uncertainty brought by policy changes. The second is the problem of insufficient penetration into the bottom of the market caused by the high labor cost of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The establishment of the joint venture company is conducive to solving the production costs, distribution channels and the expansion of the domestic grassroots market on the premise of ensuring product quality.
The cooperation between Merck (called "Merck" outside the United States and Canada) and Xiansheng, which has received much attention before, is rapidly entering the practical level. "We hope to start cooperative sales on September 1 day to show our complementarity. Quick results are also an innovation of our cooperation. " Ren Jinsheng, Chairman and CEO of the Board of Directors of Voice Group, said excitedly at the press conference of Merck and Voice in August 16. At this meeting, the two sides revealed the contents of cooperation and more details of establishing a joint venture in China.