The daily business briefing: August 22, 2016

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1. Pfizer agrees to $14 billion deal to acquire Medivation
2. ChemChina acquisition of Syngenta clears key hurdle
3. Fed No. 2 says economy close to hitting employment and inflation targets
4. European leaders hold second summit on Brexit fallout
5. Ben-Hur remake makes weak debut in latest Paramount flop

published 22 August 2016

1. Pfizer agrees to $14 billion deal to acquire Medivation

Pfizer has sealed a deal to buy U.S. biotech Medivation for $14 billion, the companies announced Monday. Pfizer beat out French drug maker Sanofi, which courted Medivation for months. Pfizer has been trying to use acquisitions to make up for slowing sales of older drugs. Buying Medivation would give Pfizer a blockbuster prostate-cancer treatment, Xtandi, that has been approved, and is projected to generate $1.3 billion in sales by 2020.

A U.S. regulator has signed off on the purchase of Swiss chemical and seed giant Syngenta by China National Chemical Corporation, also known as ChemChina, the state-owned Chinese company said Monday. The approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States got ChemChina past the biggest potential obstacle to the deal, which would be the biggest foreign acquisition by a Chinese company ever. Syngenta shares jumped by 11.2 percent on the news.

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Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said Sunday that the U.S. economy is close to hitting the central bank's targets for full employment and two-percent inflation. The remark suggested that the Fed's No. 2 policy maker is inclined to support raising interest rates this year, although he gave no indication of when the hike might come. U.S. stock futures were mixed before the start of the week's trading on Monday as investors look ahead to a Friday speech by Fed chief Janet Yellen that could provide a better idea of whether the next rate increase could come next month, or later.

The leaders of Germany, France, and Italy are meeting on an island near Naples on Monday for their second round of crisis talks on how to limit Brexit damage to the European Union. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is hosting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in what he said Sunday would be a discussion on "how to relaunch Europe from the bottom up" after Britain's decision to leave the trading bloc. The leaders of the euro zone's three biggest nations also will discuss terrorism, immigration, and other critical issues.

The latest remake of Ben-Hur flopped at the box office in its debut, making just $11.4 million at 3,804 theaters on its opening weekend. Holdovers Suicide Squad and Sausage Party held onto the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively. Timur Bekmambetov's Ben-Hur cost nearly $100 million to make and finished the weekend at No. 5. It was the last big-budget film of the summer, and the latest in a series of disappointing films for Paramount Pictures.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.