Domestic pharmaceutical and bio corporations are accelerating business structure overhauls through organizational reshuffles and mergers by absorption.
As the burden of new drug development expense grows and capital market contraction worsens fundraising conditions, analysis suggests a widening move to pull dispersed research and development (R&D) organizations and business assets back under the parent.
According to the pharmaceutical industry on the 12th, Hanmi Pharmaceutical reorganized its existing structure into four institutional sectors — ▲ innovation growth ▲ sustainable growth ▲ future growth ▲ growth support — and integrated and reassigned the new product development center, marketing center, Pyeongtaek manufacturing center, and overseas sales team.
The R&D organization was restructured under the future growth division. The company will focus early pipeline discovery and clinical strategy functions around the obesity metabolism center, oncology center, and convergence center, and decided to operate a "portfolio committee" to set priorities for large-scale clinical investments.
The industry reads this as a step to reduce decision-making layers between organizations and improve investment efficiency.
HK inno.N is also pushing an organizational overhaul, to be announced in Jun. The company recently reorganized the new drug research institute under the R&D head into an innovative new drug center, a nonclinical development center, a bio research center, and a CDMO center. It kept the existing bio research institute as the new drug research institute and rebuilt the organization. By integrating the bio research institute staff into the new drug research institute, the R&D organization expanded.
The Scopield Biome Research Institute, which handled microbiome research within the Kolmar Group, also moved into HK inno.N's R&D organization. This is seen as a strategy to concentrate drug development capabilities in HK inno.N, the group's specialized pharmaceutical company. HK inno.N is building a new R&D center in Pangyo Second Techno Valley in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. Completion is scheduled for the end of this year, and the investment scale was 114.9 billion won based on the 2022 disclosure.
Some also analyze that while the pharmaceutical industry in the past expanded its size by spinning off business units, setting up subsidiaries, and pursuing initial public offerings (IPO) to segment research and development organizations, the strategic axis has recently shifted to efficiency and profitability.
That is because, amid rising clinical expense and continued price pressure on generics, demand has grown to focus limited resources on core pipelines.
In fact, moves to reintegrate subsidiaries are continuing. Huons is pushing a merger by absorption of its 100% subsidiary Huons BioPharma. The strategy is to unify drug business organizations into one to centralize production, research, and sales functions and simplify the business structure.
The company will proceed with a small-scale merger without issuing new shares, with the merger date on Jun. 23 and procedures to be completed in Jun. Huons also plans to expand its contract manufacturing organization (CMO) business based on the Huons BioPharma Osong plant.
Ildong Pharmaceutical also decided on the 16th of last month to merge by absorption Unovia, its research and development–specialized affiliate. The merger date is Jun. 16.
This comes about two years after Unovia was established in 2023 through a physical split. Ildong Pharmaceutical plans, through the Unovia merger, to promote the commercialization of major pipelines — including a GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) class obesity treatment and a P-CAB class peptic ulcer treatment — centered on the headquarters. This is interpreted as a strategy to reintegrate dispersed R&D asset to accelerate development and commercialization.
Some analysis says this reshuffling trend is also affected by market wariness over duplicate listings of subsidiaries. In the past, separating R&D organizations into independent entities for listing was used as a means to boost corporate value, but recently, as concerns grow over dilution of parent value, there has been a stronger push to reintegrate core asset into the headquarters.
HLB is also being discussed as a candidate for group-level restructuring. HLB last year merged its subsidiary HLB Science by absorption, integrating some research and development functions. However, a merger with HLB Life Science was withdrawn after the scale of the 2025 appraisal rights exceeded the company's limit.
Within the industry, some view that, given recent organizational changes such as reassigning CEOs between HLB and HLB Life Science, the possibility of resuming merger talks remains open. However, the share price trend — at a level that can reduce the burden of appraisal rights — is cited as a variable.
An industry official said, "In the past, spinning off business units and listing subsidiaries were seen as growth strategies, but recently investment efficiency and managing corporate value have become more important," and added, "The trend of refocusing core pipelines and R&D capabilities around the headquarters is likely to continue for the time being."