Pfizer buys Wyeth for $68B

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — No. 1 drug maker, Pfizer Inc., said Monday it is buying No. 12 Wyeth for $68 billion in a deal that will quickly boost Pfizer’s revenue and profit and transform it overnight into a more diversified company less reliant on its dwindling drug pipeline.

New York-based Pfizer managed with one stroke to overshadow a full house of issues: a 90 percent drop in income, a hefty charge to end an investigation, a severe cut in its dividend, a shockingly low profit forecast for 2009 and 8,000 job cuts starting immediately.

That’s all on top of the colossal problem triggering this deal: the expected loss of $13 billion a year in revenue for cholesterol fighter Lipitor starting in November 2011, when it gets generic competition.

Pfizer also plans to cut about 8,000 jobs, 10 percent of its workforce, as part of what it expects will be a staff reduction totaling 15 percent of the combined companies’ workers — implying a total job loss of almost 20,000.

By buying Wyeth, Pfizer will mutate from a maker of blockbuster pills to a one-stop shop for vaccines, biotech drugs, traditional pills and nonprescription products for both people and animals.

The cash-and-stock deal, one of the industry’s biggest ever, is expected to close late in the third quarter or in the fourth quarter. It comes as Pfizer’s 2007 fourth-quarter.