Celltech acquired Oxford GlycoSciences (OGS) by offering a price of 182 pence per share. The acquisition highlights a bare possibility faced by biotech companies that are unwilling to engage in consolidation on more equal terms – the possibility of hostile acquisition and subsequent cherry picking of their most valuable IP and liquidation of everything else. Celltech/OGS merger has brought into focus exactly what role M&A might have to play in the development of the European biotech sector.