Botox just got even more popular.
Allergan, the company behind Botox, was bought Monday for $66 billion by pharmaceutical giant Actavis. It’s the biggest deal so far in 2014.
The tie-up would make the combined company one of the largest drug makers in the world, with $23 billion in annual sales.
The Botox maker has been a hot corporate date this year. Valeant Pharmaceuticals teamed up with billionaire investor Bill Ackman to offer $53 billion to acquire Allergan earlier this year.
Valeant said it “cannot justify to its own shareholders” the price that Actavis agreed to pay.
The Allergan deal caps off what has been a red hot year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) that could beat the record set in 2007.
Earlier on Monday, Halliburton inked a $34.6 billion deal to acquire Baker Hughes, forming an energy giant with over 136,000 employees.
Even before Monday’s merger mania, M&A volume in the U.S. stood at $1.4 trillion this year, according to Dealogic. That was the highest volume on record as of November 11 and up over 40% from the year before.
The health care world has been the focal point of the buyout boom, with over $300 billion of deals announced so far this year.
