Exclusive / Pfizer mulls suing Metsera, Novo over topping bid

Pfizer is muscling up in the slimdown fight. The company is preparing to sue Metsera and possibly Novo Nordisk after the Danish drugmaker behind Ozempic topped Pfizer’s bid for Metsera, a person familiar with the matter said. Pfizer said Novo’s bid — a richly priced but complicated two-step deal that Metsera’s board had previously rejected as too risky — skirts regulatory approvals and doesn’t qualify as “superior” to Pfizer’s agreed $7 billion deal.

The Metsera deal was Pfizer’s belated way into the $150 billion market for weight-loss drugs, after it abandoned efforts to produce a pill. Pfizer previewed a PR strategy to cast itself and Metsera as US national champions and Novo’s bid as a foreign catch-and-kill operation: “It is an attempt by a company with a dominant market position to suppress competition in violation of law by taking over an emerging American challenger,” Pfizer said.