M&A Activity in the Healthcare Market: Two Case Studies
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate both the relevance of a Merge and Acquisition (from now M&A) and Alliance in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Reasons that make a company undertake an M&A or Alliance are various: a firm could be willing to expand its businesses, weaken the competition in its industry, buy technology from the market or accelerate its growth. Furthermore, other than those growth-related reasons, M&A can be used as a cost-cutting driver. After a brief introduction of the intellectual property, in Chapter 1 is discussed the definition and typology of M&A and alliance. Furthermore, two case studies will be analyzed in order to show in practice how a M&A process works and which are the main factors driving the M&A activities. The second chapter will focus on M&A activities undertaken by a strategic buyer. A case study will be provided and will regard a merger that took place in 2015, when two companies providers of medical diagnostics in the clinical laboratory services market, Synlab and LABCO, have been taken over by a Private Equity fund and then merged in a new company that eventually became a champion in the industry and a third chapter will provide an example of an inversion deal not concluded due to US Government intervention, studying the case of the failed merger between two research-based biotechnology companies, AbbVie and Shire . First of all, the chapter 2 and 3 will analysis of the sector will be provided, showing which are the key elements driving the success and the main risk factors that companies may have to face. The firms subject of the merger will be analyzed in both the corporate profile and the financial performances.A detailed study of the deal, as well as the new company formed following the merger, will be eventually presented. Chapter 4 set the conclusion of the project thesis.
Cationic nanogels for water shut-off treatments via inverse miniemulsion polymerisation
This work focuses on the formulation of cationic nanogels via inverse miniemulsion polymerisation in order to solve the problem related to the presence of the water inside an oil well. In fact, this project is in collaboration with ENI. The adopted polymerisation technique involves a continuous phase, that it is a specific solvent supplied by the company, a monomer, which has a positive charge, a cross-linking agent and two different surfactants in order to stabilise the system. A couple of redox initiator is used to start the reaction. The most important device is used in this work is the sonicator, that is able to produce the finale materials due to the use of the ultrasound. In order to evaluate the swelling behavior, so the quality of the obtained products, Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and thermogravimetric analysis are used. The aim of the work is to understand the degrees of freedom of the system. It means the possibility to obtain different swelling behavior according to the synthesis. For these reasons, the attempts vary for the amount of the several compounds, modified in each synthesis, on at a time. In addition, the swelling capacity is evaluated as a function of the different salinity of the oil wells by using four different water at different salinity degree. Once the influence of each parameter is evaluated, the performance of nanogels are studied in a qualitative way in a system composed of nanogels, water and oil with the purpose to extract only oil and not anymore water from the oil well. Finally, it is evaluated the stability of nanogels in case of conservation in order to preserve their characteristics for a time interval of fifteen days. Therefore, different samples are stored at two different temperatures and the results show that the nanogels are stable for both temperatures.
Engineered bioplastics compounds based on SAN/PLA alloys
The main objective of the experimental research was the preparation and characterization new polymer blends containing bio-sourced polylactide (PLA) and a selected petrochemical copolymer (styrene-acrylonitrile copolymer, SAN), products that can be interesting for their lower carbon footprint in semi-durable applications. Various melt blends between PLA and SAN were produced and characterized as well as some related formulations filled with either selected impact modifiers or organoclay nano-platelets. The mechanical testing shows also that the association of these two brittle polymers (PLA and SAN) is leading to blends characterized by low impact strength. Generally, the impact performances were determined by the main component of the blend. Having like objective the improving of mechanical properties such impact strength, the addition of different impact modifiers into PLA/SAN blends has been considered. The impact characterizations did not evidence some important increases of values for this parameter. Excellent tensile strength performances were obtained by utilization of Paraloid; results that are ascribed to a compatibilizing effect of this BA/MMA copolymer. To obtain specific end-use properties (barrier properties, non-dripping and charring formation, etc) selected clays (e.g., Cloisite 30B) have been added into PLA/SAN blends. The test UL 94 HB shows that the burning of PLA/SAN-6% clay is without dripping and with formation of charring.