Neuro companies are one of pharma’s hottest M&A assets. But behind the scenes, there have been few bidders

De­spite be­ing a hot tick­et in bio­phar­ma, neu­ro­science com­pa­nies have at­tract­ed few bid­ders in the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar deals struck in re­cent months.

An SEC fil­ing Mon­day shows Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s $14 bil­lion deal for Karuna Ther­a­peu­tics, an­nounced Dec. 22, had on­ly one oth­er bid­der in the mix. And a sim­i­lar fil­ing from ear­li­er this month in­di­cates that Ab­b­Vie was the on­ly se­ri­ous buy­er for Cerev­el Ther­a­peu­tics, which it will ac­quire for $8.7 bil­lion.

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