I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for just under 20 years. This news is quite disturbing to me, for a number of reasons, many enumerated above.
As previously noted, there is no significant relationship/synergy between producing films and pharmaceuticals. The latter business is very highly regulated, and operates at far higher levels of QA/QC. It is also an industry that is quite risky.
The only one compound in 10,000 makes it to the marketplace, and the average cost of developing a successful drug these days is not far off a billion dollars (US). It takes up to 10 years of testing and regulatory review to get the drug approved.
The industry has picked off the low-hanging fruit, and is finding it harder and harder to develop drugs that are real breakthroughs. Smaller companies simply don't have the resources to do R&D: the big guys are using very expensive and very high tech approaches to synthesize and screen compounds at astounding rates (up to hundreds per day, if I recall correctly). The acquired company seems to have a very sparse pipeline.
I am concerned that by straying too far from its core competence, Fujifilm may be sinking money into a venture with poor or negative returns. I want Fujifilm and Kodak and Ilford to be as profitable as possible in their core businesses, so as to keep our favourite analog products available. I cringe at suggestions that they diversify (this story) or assume production of marginal products (Polaroid material).
