---
title: "AbbVie → Allergan"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/abbvie-buy-allergan-2019"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2019"
---

# AbbVie → Allergan

AbbVie's $63bn cash-and-share purchase of Allergan, the Dublin-domiciled maker of Botox, was a bet placed years before its own best-selling drug lost US protection: buy a second set of franchises large enough to carry the company through the decline of Humira.

Added Botox to AbbVie's portfolio ahead of the loss of US exclusivity on Humira.

- **Acquirer:** AbbVie (United States)
- **Target:** Allergan (Ireland)
- **Value:** $63B
- **Announced:** June 2019
- **Completed:** May 2020
- **Sector:** Pharma
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

In 2018 Humira, an autoimmune-disease treatment, brought in $19.9bn of AbbVie's $32.8bn of revenue, and biosimilar copies were already cutting its sales outside the United States. Allergan offered something different: Botox, with annual sales of nearly $4bn, Juvederm fillers, and medicines for eye care, neuroscience and gastroenterology. Allergan was itself a product of deal-making. Actavis had bought Allergan Inc. for about $70bn in 2015, taken its name and kept its legal home in Ireland; a $160bn merger with Pfizer collapsed in 2016 when Washington moved against tax inversions; and in May 2019 its chief executive, Brent Saunders, survived a shareholder proposal from Appaloosa Management to split his roles.

The terms agreed in June 2019 gave Allergan holders $120.30 in cash and 0.8660 of an AbbVie share for each share — $188.24 in all, a 45% premium. AbbVie promised at least $2bn of annual pre-tax savings by the third year and a $15–18bn reduction in debt by the end of 2021, and the combined company stayed a Delaware corporation. To satisfy the US Federal Trade Commission, Allergan sold its experimental IL-23 drug brazikumab to AstraZeneca and the pancreatic-enzyme products Zenpep and Viokace to Nestlé. The deal closed on 8 May 2020, after approval by the Irish High Court.

## What it left behind

Humira's US exclusivity ended in 2023, and by 2025 its sales had fallen to $4.54bn, down 49.5% in a single year. AbbVie still grew, to $61.2bn of revenue in 2025, largely on its own immunology successors, Skyrizi at $17.6bn and Rinvoq at $8.3bn. Allergan's contribution split in two. Neuroscience, most of it Allergan's Vraylar, therapeutic Botox and Ubrelvy, grew 19.6% to $10.8bn; aesthetics fell 6.1% to $4.86bn. The purchase also brought liabilities: in July 2022 AbbVie agreed to pay up to $2.37bn to settle US lawsuits over the Allergan unit's marketing of opioid painkillers, while denying wrongdoing. AbbVie's later purchases were smaller: ImmunoGen for $10.1bn and Cerevel for $8.7bn in 2024. The case suggests that a patent cliff is best bought against early, while the old franchise still pays for the new one, and that a consumer-facing business acquired as ballast can prove less steady than the prescription medicines bought alongside it.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergan