Big pharma: GSK to split as it forms £9.8bn consumer health venture with Pfizer December 19, 2018 British pharmaceuticals group Glaxosmithkline (GSK) has revealed it has entered into an agreement with US rival Pfizer to combine their consumer health businesses into one joint venture, expected to bring in sales of approximately £9.8bn. GSK said it will hold a majority controlling interest in the new venture at 68 per cent, while Pfizer will [...]
Tesco fraud fiasco leaves new SFO boss with serious questions to answer December 6, 2018 The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has had more ups and downs than Thomas Cook’s share price. When it scores a big success, like the near £500m deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with Rolls-Royce, it gets cheered to the rafters, while failures such as the Tchenguiz brothers debacle sees it dubbed the Serious Farce Office by critics. [...]
GSK drops on $5.1bn deal for ovarian drug producer Tesaro December 3, 2018 Shares in Glaxo Smith Kline dropped almost seven per cent today after the company said it will take over US cancer firm Tesaro. At $75 per share, the UK’s biggest drugmaker is paying a 110 per cent premium for Tesaro’s stock. The New York-listed company was up 59 per cent to $73.76 in pre-market trading, [...]
Unilever invests in India with €3.3bn deal for Horlicks December 3, 2018 Unilever has agreed to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s nutritions arm, including Horlicks, a week after press reports the two were in exclusive talks. The €3.3bn (2.9bn) deal will give the British-Dutch consumer goods company a substantial presence on the growing Indian market. It will buy GSK’s health food drinks portfolio in India, Bangladesh and 20 other mainly [...]
New report will urge FTSE bosses to bolster number of women on their boards or risk being accused of tokenism November 10, 2018 Next week around 75 firms in the FTSE-350 will be challenged as to the number of women on their boards, with concerns that many are not taking gender diversity seriously enough. The Hampton-Alexander review is expected to highlight that as many as 75 companies only have one female board member and risk being accused of tokenism amid [...]
FTSE 100 roundup: Today’s winners and losers November 2, 2018 The FTSE 100 lost ground today, with the index down 8.05 points at 7,106.61 shortly before the market close. Markets globally reacted positively to suggestions that the US and China may be coming towards a deal to end their recent trade war. However, looking at the week just gone, it appears that the FTSE 100 [...]
FTSE round up: Unilever boosts index as Easyjet sinks October 19, 2018 The FTSE 100 closed up 0.8 per cent for the week on after climbing to 7,051.41 today on the back of strong performances from consumer goods companies Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever. Unilever’s shares were up 3.11 per cent, reversing yesterday’s losses which followed it delivering a solid, but slightly underwhelming set of third quarter results. [...]
GSK share price hit by clinical trial failure of major new respiratory medicine Breo September 9, 2015 Today, GSK released disappointing clinical results for a new respiratory drug it hoped would bring in billions of pounds worth of sales. Breo, a treatment for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), managed to extend life expectancy by just 12.2 per cent among a patient sample size of 16,500 from 43 countries around [...]
Here’s what we can learn from the 10 biggest deals in pharmaceutical history August 7, 2015 The pharmaceutical world is abuzz about a major deal struck between AbbVie and small biotech company Pharmacyclics last night. The US pharma giant bought Pharmacyclics for a massive $21bn (£13.8bn), after fending off fierce competition from the likes of Johnson & Johnson. Why? To get its hands on the firm's super-successful cancer drug Imbuvrica, whose [...]
Lloyds, GSK and Vodafone: The 10 shares pension drawdown investors are buying up August 5, 2015 Four months after pension savers were given freedoms allowing them to withdraw their savings and invest it into other areas, they have yet to spend their pension pots on those Ferraris everyone was worried about when the freedoms were first announced. Or that's according to financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, anyway, which has listed the top [...]