COVID-19 or SARS Cov-2 to be precise, has changed the world in many regards. From the way we work, to the way we do business as well as to even what used to be the simplest thing – chatting over coffee. Now everything, or at least for the time being, is either via online video or 6 feet apart. Business development activities are no exception and we are now experiencing a new world where almost all activities have gone online, something we feel we can live with but at the same time wonder whether we can totally rely on.

As we have laid out in our Q1 2020 Report: Global Trends in Biopharma Transactions, the negative sentiment of COVID-19 did not affect deal making for Japanese companies, as the volume of deals in Q1 2020 doubled from the previous year marking a total deal value of $4.6B (for China, there was a 16% increase in deal volume for the same period). But what is the rest of the year going to look like and how will the recent situation affect Japan pharma’s business development activities?

In order to answer these questions, we have reached out to BD professionals in Japan pharma for a special survey to assess how COVID-19 impacted or is impacting their BD activities. Through this survey, we hope to better understand how COVID-19 impacted business development activities for Japanese pharma as well as understanding their decision-making process and how they are thinking of rising from this pandemic that has affected us all so much.

We conducted the survey between May 29th and June 6th, reaching out to more than 200 BD professionals in Japanese biopharma companies and Japanese subsidiaries of foreign companies, and received input from more than 33%.

The respondents to our survey were from a wide range of company sizes, with an almost even split of small companies (with under 500 employees) and mid-sized to large companies with employees over 1,000.