Kristen Pothier says interest rate cuts are "no longer a game changer" for life sciences deal volume.
1. The Top Line, from Fierce Pharma and Fierce Biotech, examines how biopharma dealmaking is moving into 2026 after a cautious 2025, using KPMG's new healthcare and life sciences investment outlook.
2. Fierce Pharma's Fraser Kahnsteiner interviews Kristen Pothier, KPMG's U.S. and Americas life sciences sector leader and global deal advisory and strategy leader for healthcare and life sciences, who says she has worked in the industry for 30 years.
3. Pothier contrasts last year's report, titled "smart optimism," with this year's "proof over promise," arguing that diligence and integration plans are now completed during the deal process rather than afterward.
4. She describes 2025 as lower-volume, with companies using cost takeouts, headcount reductions, and automation to right-size after COVID-era acquisition spending.
5. On the FDA, she says review-timeline uncertainty leads buyers to build in time and cost buffers and use scenario modeling, with oncology and neurology feeling it most while certain metabolic and immunology segments stay attractive.
6. On tariffs, she calls them "background noise" after the Greenland threat, and advises small and midsize drug makers to favor flexible capacity, contract manufacturing, and U.S.-based CDMOs over fixed investments.
7. She reports that more than half of life sciences respondents, and half of PE/VC respondents, said a rate decrease would only marginally raise deal volume, unlike five years ago.
8. Pothier says private equity is back with "speed," "flexibility," and "dry powder," forcing corporate buyers to compete on carve-outs and platform deals.
9. She adds that pharmaceutical distributors are buying physician practices and services, moving from "the historic quote-unquote middleman" to ecosystem participants, while valuations for innovative platforms are not expected to dip much.
10. Suited to biopharma executives, investors, and deal-watchers wanting a 2026 outlook.
