Saunders added: "Allergan is focused on delivering growth from an efficient operating structure while also being committed to investing in R&D through our Open Science model. The company is also poised to deliver additional growth opportunities from its attractive financial profile and balance sheet, propelled by approximately $40.5 billion pre-tax from the sale of our Actavis Generics business to Teva, expected to close in June 2016." A deal between the two big companies could have seen a combined research budget of around $9 billion--although Pfizer had already said it would have needed to have made around $2 billion in research cuts, with its CRO partners projected to take the short term pain from a slowdown in business. This is second time unlucky for Pfizer as back in 2014, it tried but failed to buy British drugmaker AstraZeneca ($AZN) and its pipeline after the Anglo-Swedish company spurned its advances.