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You can’t completely blame Pfizer’s executives, yet Roche’s $7 billion acquisition of a bowel-disease treatment that it owned until last year isn’t a great look. In a deal that now feels like a biotech version of “Moneyball,” Roivant announced it was selling an asset that only 11 months ago it got for free from Pfizer. (The Wall Street Journal had reported the talks back in July). Big pharma companies focused on the drug industry equivalent of free agent signings will often overlook one of their own hot prospects. In fact, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy founded Roivant on the idea that pharma’s trash can be another company’s treasure. But this one became an almost instant All-Star.

Operating rooms are central to what hospitals do, but they're also at the root of a problem Woods and others at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) are trying to solve: how to reduce carbon pollution. "Operating rooms are a pretty small part of the physical footprint of a hospital, but they produce an outsized amount of the waste," Woods said.

The American healthcare system is experiencing a growing crisis: How do we adequately staff our operating rooms, hospitals, clinics and offices with healthcare professionals? The lack of staff crosses all professional lines, from physicians to nurses to lab technologists—all levels of staff are in short supply. To deal with this challenge, health administrators have resorted to using temporary contract workers known as locums. These temporary, stop-gap employees are usually paid multiple times more than permanent staff. This practice not only undervalues full-time employees, but also exacerbates the crisis because it robs staff from other facilities to staff another. Finally, the increase in locums, and its associated costs, has undeniably harmed the bottom line with many services and facilities closing down, further decreasing access to healthcare for the public.

Pharmaceutical giants have accumulated sizable war chests to buy up rivals. Scope Group, a financial ratings firm, reports that the world’s 10 largest pharmas collectively have $120 billion (€111 billion) in cash on their balance sheets. “The pharmaceutical sector will remain one of the few industry sectors where M&A [mergers and acquisitions] remains buoyant despite rising interest rates, but large mergers and cross-border transactions are not likely,” stated a report by Olaf Tölke, Scope’s director of corporate ratings.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/e03d746c-e74c-4e95-8d12-d1edef2880d7 Pharmaceutical and biotech companies spent $85bn on acquisitions in the first five months of the year, marking a dramatic recovery in dealmaking as they seek to replenish their drug pipelines. The surge in M&A, compared to just $35.6bn in deals in the same period of 2022 and $49.1bn the year before, according to Stifel, an investment bank, is being fuelled by large cash reserves amassed by Big Pharma during the coronavirus pandemic and investor concerns about future growth prospects.