Pfizer to buy King Pharma for $3.6b in cash

Pfizer Inc, the world's biggest drugmaker, has agreed to buy King Pharmaceuticals Inc for $3.6 billion, expanding its presence in the market for pain drugs.
Pfizer said on Tuesday it will pay $14.25 a share for King -- representing a 40 percent premium over King's closing share price on Monday.
Pfizer, which faces the imminent threat of generic competition to its biggest-selling product, the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, said the combination will allow it to leverage its existing commercial capabilities to create a leading portfolio of products for pain relief.
Pfizer's pain products include Lyrica and Celebrex. King will bring Avinza, the Flector Patch and the recently launched Embeda, the first approved opioid pain product intended to discourage abuse. King has other abuse-resistant pain products in development as well.
Opioids -- which include morphine, fentanyl and oxycodone -- are powerful narcotic drugs that can be highly addictive. That has led companies on the difficult mission of creating drugs that are therapeutic but which are difficult to abuse. King is a leading player in the space.
The market for pain relief and management is large and increasing. Physicians in the United States wrote about 320 million prescriptions to treat pain in 2009, Pfizer said.