In this post a while back I wrote about the problems that mid-market pharma companies are having dealing with patent expirations.  The Jenks Health Care Report has an article on the future of Schering Plough available here , which goes into much more detail about what’s wrong at Schering and whether it can be made right.  Their view is that Schering will be dressed up for sale.  The question is, would an acquisition of a wounded company help any of the usual big Pharma suspects? Most of them have already gotten big enough in terms of sales force and market clout, so would they want Schering’s somewhat lackluster portfolio and pipeline?  Probably not at its current PE ratio of 20, which is the same as that of Bristol-Myers Squibb.  Pfizer’s PE ratio is around 50.