Directors ponder Pfizer-Wyeth deal

NEW YORK - Directors of Pfizer Inc. met yesterday to consider the acquisition of rival drug maker Wyeth in a deal that could be worth more than $65 billion, said people with knowledge of the talks. Pfizer's CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, would lead the combined companies, two people said.

Wyeth's directors also met to consider the acquisition.

A deal could help New York-based Pfizer, the world's biggest drug maker, offset some of the $12 billion in revenue it begins losing in 2011 when the Lipitor cholesterol pill gets generic competition. It may also spur more consolidation in an industry buffeted by a thinning pipeline of new products and a growing number of patent expirations.

The combined company would have 130,000 employees. Its annual revenue would be 55 percent more than at the world's second-biggest drug maker, London-based GlaxoSmithKline.

The last big pharmaceutical industry acquisition came in August 2004, when Paris-based Sanofi-Synthelabo acquired Aventis SA of Strasburg, France, for $64.4 billion to create Sanofi Aventis SA. A Pfizer-Wyeth deal would exceed Roche Holding AG's $43.7 billion offer for the remainder of Genentech Inc., announced in July.

Pfizer would inherit Wyeth's legal woes, though: It faces claims by 10,000 women who contend its hormone replacement drugs Prempro and Premarin cause breast cancer.

Wyeth also set aside $21 billion to resolve a decade of litigation over its fen-phen diet pill, pulled off the market in 1997.