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Delicate balancing act for Big Pharma

The Times (London)

May 2, 2009 Saturday

Edition 1

Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Limited All Rights Reserved

Section: FEATURES; Pg. 78

Length: 866 words

Byline: Robert Cole

Body

As the worries over swine flu spread across the world, the gravest concerns are for public health. But worries have spilled into the investment arena as well. Share prices of airlines, hotel and leisure companies slid as soon as news of the possible pandemic hit the headlines.

As Mexico, the apparent source of the illness, ordered a virtual shutdown of its economy and banned large public gatherings, investors faced an altogether more comprehensive threat. Investment success, at its base, depends on human interaction. If we are obliged to stop mixing, we stop trading. And if we stop trading in the name of health, our finances will suffer.

The world economy is hardly in rude health, thanks to the credit crunch and ensuing recession. Of itself, this may magnify the economic impact of a pandemic. Even fewer people will venture out to the shops.

Housing and construction will slip further down the lists of priorities.

Energy companies will be hit as people and companies do less, and need less power to do it..

Behind the masks that are covering faces with alarming frequency, can anyone afford to smile? Just as the kneejerk stock market reaction was to mark down the prices of British Airways and InterContinental Hotels, so shares in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which makes the Relenza anti-flu treatment, and Roche, the owner of the similar Tamiflu drug, rose.

Investors with an eye to the main chance sought other possibilities.

Who makes these masks? Are paper hankies the thing to be in? Will sales of disinfectant soar? In the context of the pandemic, commercial considerations will struggle to find a place in any respectable conversations. Some thoughts, such as cost/benefit analysis for tissue makers, veer into the realm of the ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the odds are stacked against profiteers. The broad economic threats outnumber the opportunities. At the same time, narrowly focused money spinners are unlikely to have things all their own way. If Relenza and Tamiflu, for instance, provide answers to the public health questions, the drug manufacturers may well be obliged to put supply considerations above profit. If they are seen to coin unreasonable advantage, the effects of a post-pandemic backlash in public opinion will surely drown any near-term gains.

Besides, one cannot assume that a licence to make a vaccine is a licence to print money. Drugs may have to be reformulated to take account of the specific attributes of this type of flu. They may have to be re-engineered if, or when, the virus mutates. Nor can the likes of GSK and Roche assume that they will have exclusivity. Financial returns will fall if rival companies obtain lookalike products. Offers to help to ease supply bottlenecks will, again, be impossible to resist on moral grounds, and will dilute the value of the commercial opportunity. At the same time, there is a good chance that swine flu will peter out, as other potential pandemics have.

But while thoughts of short-term enrichment are both distasteful and probably largely illusory, the swine flu outbreak should give investors pause for thought.

They should ask themselves whether they want to provide capital backing for companies that seek to take financial advantage from the woes of others. The political and cultural mood is swinging back towards statism and away from the assumption - held for several decades now - that the autonomous efforts of individuals, companies and other enterprises give better results than centralised, politicised control. If this occurs, investors must adjust, or get used to the idea that they will be cut off from opportunities to invest in the relatively free and diverse ways they did previously.

I hope that policymakers around the world will appreciate that free and open economies are best equipped to deliver social benefits, in health as in many other spheres.

Government guidance and regulation is required, but investors should not be made to feel that they are taking heartless advantage. They should be appreciated for their willingness to provide capital and take risks.

Without them, Tamiflu and Relenza may never have been developed in the first place. The profits earned should be seen for what they really are: an ordinary operating cost, not a windfall whipped from the needy with inexcusable sang-froid.

There is a separate argument to be had about where and how companies should use private investment capital, and which are best placed to meet the goals of matching and delivering social and financial benefits. Early stage biotechnology, for instance, is a vastly different ball game to multinational drug marketing. But if the natural and generally beneficial action of private effort is allowed to flourish, time will show that there is long-term value in big drugs companies. The UK pharmaceuticals sector - dominated by GSK and AstraZeneca - trades on a price/earnings ratio of 8 and a dividend yield of 6 per cent. These valuations leave plenty of room for justifiable reward for those prepared to provide long-term sustainable funding to private enterprise, and help to resolve bigger economic, health and political worries.

They provide the capital to develop the likes of Tamiflu and Relenza

18. 6. – 25. 6. 1921


Na željezničkoj pruzi između Zelenike i Uskoplja, naoružana grupa razbojnika golemim je kamenjem zatrpala prugu, a zatim – kad se pojavio putnički vlak – po vagonima osula paljbu. Pucnjava je trajala više od 50 minuta i pritom su smrtno stradali strojovođa, dvojica konduktera, trgovac iz Podgorice, putnica iz Sarajeva i dijete koje je držala u naručju. Novine javljaju da su "razbojnici navalili na preplašene putnike i opljačkali im sav novac i dragocjenosti. Jednako tako totalno je opljačkan poštanski vagon u kojem se nalazilo 1.900.000 kruna. Prije nego što su napadnuti putnici vraćeni natrag u vlak morali su tri puta kliknuti: 'Živjeli Crnogorci'…" Nekoliko dana kasnije novine su objavile da se iza razbojničkog prepada kriju poznati crnogorski odmetnici Đuro Todorović i Zeko Dalibanić