April 28, 2014

expert reaction to news of possible Pfizer takeover of AstraZeneca

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer is reported to have been in contact with AstraZeneca regarding a possible takeover.

Dr Melanie Lee, Director and Founder of Think10, said:

“The potential takeover of AstraZeneca by Pfizer would not present a positive move for the UK science base nor AZ R&D. It is likely to involve reducing R&D investment across the combined group, as has been the trend for all large pharma companies in the past years and as inevitably follows a merger.  The AZ UK investment in R&D in the Cambridgeshire area of the UK would also become extremely vulnerable at this stage unless specific provision and commitment is made as part of the merger and acquisition process. 

The UK scientific community and government should ask very serious questions about this proposal and understand fully that this could be a further nail in the coffin of our UK based pharmaceutical industry which is necessarily required to nurture and feed our biotechnology companies.”

Prof John Hardy, Professor of Neuroscience, UCL, said:

“Takeover bids like this are a sign of weakness in the pharma sector.  AZ downsized considerably last year and this must be of great concern to its remaining employees, particularly in Cheshire, where the company started as ICI.”

Dr Sarah Main, Director of Campaign for Science & Engineering (CaSE), said:

“AstraZeneca and GSK are the two pillars of the UK’s thriving and economically important life sciences sector, supporting biotech and academia across the science base. To lose one of them to foreign ownership would be a blow. It would raise fears about the protection of AstraZeneca’s innovative research programme in the UK, especially given that Pfizer has already looked at the UK and decided to remove its own R&D operations.”

“The Government’s patent box is a good incentive and is likely to have influenced Pfizer’s proposal to keep a foot in the UK by combining with AZ under a new UK-incorporated holding company.

“AstraZeneca is absolutely key to the Chancellor’s plans to use UK science and engineering to drive economic growth. We need a complete ecosystem of excellent academic research, spin-outs, biotechs and large pharma for our life sciences sector to continue to flourish.  I hope the Government will do all it can to keep AZ’s innovative research in the UK.”