Pharmaceutical companies are acquiring overseas drug candidates at unprecedented volume, but a New Jersey advisory firm warns that the commercial risks of launching those assets in new markets are being overlooked. Resilient Performance Group LLC, a rare disease commercial advisory practice founded by Brian Baldari, Pharm.D., MBA, has identified what it calls the Landing Gap: the commercial exposure created when an asset developed under one regulatory and payer system must now be launched under a different one.
The scale of cross-border dealmaking is clear. The value of licensing deals signed by companies in the greater China region rose nearly tenfold between 2021 and 2025, reaching $137.7 billion, according to data provider Pharmcube as reported by Reuters. Analysis published by PitchBook found that nearly three quarters of cross-border licensing agreements involved assets still in preclinical or Phase 1 testing, and concluded that China's edge in generating early-stage candidates is likely to persist. Buyers are acquiring earlier, in larger numbers, and from further away than at any point in the industry's history.
"An asset crosses a border in a single transaction. The commercial understanding required to launch it here does not cross with it," said Brian Baldari, founder and principal of Resilient Performance Group. "The diligence is thorough on the molecule and thin on everything downstream of approval. Nobody is pricing whether the development program supports a US label, whether the value story survives a US payer, or whether origin market pricing holds up in the US channel. That is the Landing Gap, and right now it is being carried as an unexamined assumption rather than a line item."
The firm has formalized the work under a named practice, Cross-Border Commercial Readiness. According to the company, the practice is not new: Resilient Performance Group has performed this work since it began operating in July 2025. Across its first twelve months, 58 percent of engagements required commercial perspective spanning more than one geographic market. Every engagement addressed the United States, and a majority also addressed Europe, Japan, or China.
Over that period the firm completed 26 engagements for 14 clients across ten therapeutic and functional areas, including rare renal disease, complement biology, hematology, cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease, hepatology, market access and reimbursement, and pipeline prioritization. Engagements supported assets from first-in-human through Phase 3. Repeat business accounted for 46 percent of engagements, a figure concentrated in two long-running client relationships rather than spread evenly across the client base. The work also shifted in character, moving from discrete scoped projects toward multi-month embedded commercial leadership for organizations that have not yet built a standing commercial function.
"I have sat on both sides of this," said Baldari. "I have carried general manager accountability for delivering a product to US customers, and I have built global strategy for assets that originated outside the United States. Most people have done one or the other. The reason this gap persists is that pricing it requires someone who has done both, and there are not many of us."
Brian Baldari spent 24 years leading pharmaceutical drug launches across medical affairs, market access, US marketing, and global strategy, rising to Vice President and Senior General Manager. He has participated in sixteen brand launches and led pipeline strategy across more than 100 compounds. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from Rutgers University and an MBA in healthcare from George Washington University.
The Cross-Border Commercial Readiness Practice serves chief commercial officers, founders, chief medical officers, boards, and investors evaluating or executing on in-licensed and cross-border assets, covering commercial diligence, US launch strategy, market access and reimbursement frameworks, competitive positioning, and investor-facing commercial materials. Client identities and engagement specifics are not disclosed. For more information, visit resilexec.com.
The implications for the industry are significant. As cross-border licensing continues to rise, companies that fail to account for the Landing Gap may face unexpected commercial challenges, from payer reimbursement hurdles to pricing pressures. With nearly three quarters of deals involving early-stage assets, the need for rigorous commercial diligence across regulatory and payer systems is more critical than ever. Resilient Performance Group's formalization of this practice underscores a growing recognition that scientific promise alone does not guarantee commercial success in a new market.
