BACK in the boom days of 2000, soaring biotech stocks, particularly those of the high-flying genomics superstars, drove bullish speculators to think the unthinkable: that a biotech might buy out a major pharmaceutical company.
The reasoning ran something like this. Biotech companies, like Internet companies, represented the future of the new economy for the 21st century. If AOL, founded in 1985, could engulf the traditional media giant Time Warner, why couldn’t Amgen, Genentech or even genomics upstart Millennium Pharmaceuticals pocket a Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly or Schering-Plough?
Investors bet heavily on the new technology. In two years, from 1998 to…
