Amgen will acquire the cancer company Onyx for $125 per share, or $10.4 billion. That's higher than the $120 per share Amgen originally offered, but less than some investors and analysts thought obtainable.

Roche’s $5.7 billion hostile takeover offer for Illumina is opportunistic as well as strategic. It is a validation of Illumina’s long-term growth potential but also takes advantage of a depressed stock price due to the global economic slowdown and cutbacks in government funding that have hurt Illumina and other providers of gene sequencing instrumentation.