IRS tax assessment for 2013, the year Perrigo acquired Dublin-based Elan, adds another cloud to OTC private label giant's outlook as it prepares to present plans for accelerating growth for its long-slumping consumer health business in the US and Europe at a March 9 investor day conference. Perrigo shares dropped more than 9% in early trading after IRS notice became known to investors before inching upward and ending at $47.92, down 6.8% from the previous day's close.

Biogen quickly became the leader in the multiple sclerosis market, growing Avonex into a billion-dollar drug. Now Biogen's dominance is being challenged by Serono and its new partner Pfizer, co-promoting another interferon, Rebif, which came to market with head-to-head data showing it's better. Biogen maintains that Avonex is the best treatment, and is working to support its contention. The biotech is confident that the relationships it has built over time, and strengthened through services, will be hard for newcomers to push aside. The potential for leverage is what attracts Pfizer to this specialist market: it aims to sell Rebif broadly. Its 300 neurology sales reps will carry other products for the co-morbidities MS patients suffer--so the ROI could be good, even if Rebif itself isn't a huge seller. An industry whose pipeline is far richer in niche than GP products will be watching this marketing battle: will Biogen's focus carry the day--or can Pfizer turn a late-entry specialist product into a market leader and in the process, make significant money for itself?

Shire's latest acquisition, of Canada's BioChem Pharma, is its sixth in as many years, and the clearest sign yet of the shift which the UK-based specialty pharmaceutical company has to make towards earlier-stage research in order to keep up its impressive growth. Behind this growth is its low-risk Search & Development strategy: it seeks out promising, undervalued specialist-market drugs which it develops for new indications, or else finds new formulations for, after which it hands them on to its highly focused marketing and sales teams. A series of acquisitions-bolting on products, development programs and skills-has allowed Shire to quickly expand globally and broaden its portfolio. But as drugs get harder to find and more expensive, the company has had to throw its S&D net wider.