The Asia Corner - From the Editors of PharmAsia News March 31, 2009
In this BioPharma Today feature, the editors of PharmAsia News take a closer look each week at the most important biopharma developments from China, India, Japan, and the Pacific Rim. Read today's features...
PERTH, Australia – Having just wrapped up another story from Singapore based on an exclusive interview with Novartis Head of Corporate Research Paul Herrling about a new model he is touting for funding R&D for neglected diseases, it seems that big pharma is re-making itself and its encouraging to see a pharma company developing drugs with no profit as the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases is doing in Singapore. That model is being presented this week to an Institute of Medicine advisory panel to President Obama. Continue reading...
PharmAsia News conducted yet another exclusive interview with Malaysian BiotechCorp Senior Vice President for Healthcare Selvam Ramaraj. Malaysia has identified the biotech sector as one of the country’s key economic drivers and the government set up the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation to identify value propositions in both R&D and commerce and support these ventures via financial assistance and other means. Read on...
In India this week, tightening control over their Indian subsidiaries was the common chord between Mylan and Novartis as the two companies announced their plans to hike stakes in their Indian affiliates. Mylan - the third largest generic drug maker in the world – planned delisting of its Indian subsidiary Matrix Labs at a cost of $133 million. The Pittsburgh-headquartered generic drug maker approved an indicative acquisition price of up to 150 rupees ($3 per share), reflecting a premium of 27 percent of the closing share price of Matrix on March 26. Mylan will use current cash balances to fund the additional acquisition of Matrix shares. Read the rest of this article...
Swiss-headquartered Novartis announced a tender offer to buy an additional stake of up to 39 percent in its majority-owned Indian subsidiary Novartis India. Novartis, which markets popular pain killer Voveran (diclofenac) in India among several other products, said it would raise its stake in the subsidiary to nearly 90 percent if the open offer for the shares passes successful. Contine reading...
Even as the U.S. FDA tightened its scrutiny of Ranbaxy’s manufacturing plant at Paonta Sahib in India on alleged charges of falsification of data, two of the world’s largest drug regulators – UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration have given the plant a clean inspection. Read on...
That clause in the Pfizer-Wyeth agreement states: "The approval of the Merger by China's Ministry of Commerce shall have been granted and/or deemed to have been granted by expiration of the applicable waiting period pursuant to the China Anti-Monopoly Law."
Approval by the Chinese authorities is a precondition to the conclusion of the merger. Under this single clause in the agreement, China could have an absolute veto over the merger. Read rest of the article...
The PharmAsia News team will be in Shanghai to cover IBC’s China 2009 Pharmaceutical R&D Summit. We welcome your feedback on stories we have covered as well as story ideas you would like to see. Email the editors at pharmasia@elsevier.com Not a subscriber? Click here to start your 30-day, risk-free trial of PharmAsia News – Immediate business intelligence from China, India, Japan and the Pacific Rim, from the publishers of "The Pink Sheet."
And in China, a short clause tucked away toward the close of a merger agreement is presenting lawyers in the U.S. and China with a 68 billion dollar question: Could China’s government block the worldwide union Of Wyeth And Pfizer?
Battered in succession by the unstable U.S. economy, faltering biologics customers and mounting losses by American subsidiary AppTec Laboratory Services, WuXi PharmTech reported a net loss of more than $60 million for 2008. Leaders of the Shanghai-headquartered WuXi PharmaTech, China's biggest drug contract research organization, said that the biopharmaceutical manufacturing business at their American affiliate AppTec had been devastated by the West's economic crisis and resulting blows to the small biotech start-ups that had been AppTec's customers. As AppTec's manufacturing operations went into a tailspin, they pulled the entire company down and into the red for 2008. Continue reading...
