Donald Trump<\/a>‘s administration to lower drug prices last week.<\/p>\nReuters spoke to seven healthcare analysts and investors. Four said Lilly could be next to make a deal, while three pointed to AstraZeneca. Others mentioned Merck, AbbVie, Regeneron and Bristol-Myers Squibb.<\/p>\n
Reuters could not independently confirm any such deals were in the offing, but drugmakers have been jostling to get a deal after Pfizer’s September 29 agreement that pledged lower prices via Medicaid for relief on tariffs on imported medicines.<\/p>\n
Lucy Coutts, a UK-based investment director at wealth manager JM Finn, predicted that AstraZeneca could be next after it broke ground on a $4.5 billion plant in Virginia this week and is planning a U.S. listing of its shares.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to think it will be AstraZeneca given revenues from U.S., its investment in manufacturing and R&D in the US and implementing a dual listing on NYSE,” she said.<\/p>\n
Lilly said it did not have specific details to share about its discussions with the administration at this time. AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.<\/p>\n
READING THE PHARMA SECTOR TEA LEAVES<\/p>\n
Reading the tea leaves with President Trump, however, is not for the faint-hearted. The Pfizer deal caught many in the industry unaware, though most firms have been looking to get into his good books amid threats of tariffs.<\/p>\n
The Pfizer deal boosted pharma sector shares, with Eli Lilly the biggest gainer since then and AstraZeneca second. Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, Pfizer itself and Novartis lag.<\/p>\n
Reuters reported last week that the U.S. government is pursuing deals across as many as 30 industries – including pharmaceuticals. According to two sources, pharma executives are receiving near-daily calls from senior government officials.<\/p>\n
Gareth Powell, head of healthcare at London-based investment fund Polar Capital, said that an announcement from Lilly could be in the works, followed by AstraZeneca.<\/p>\n
Eli Lilly said last month it will invest $5 billion to build a manufacturing facility in Virginia, part of a $27 billion U.S. expansion over the next five years.<\/p>\n
Several other pharmaceutical giants – including AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson – have announced U.S. investments this year.<\/p>\n
Lilly and AstraZeneca were among the 17 leading drug companies who received a letter from Trump in July telling them to slash prices to match those paid overseas.<\/p>\n
Powell said Trump was close to the chief executive officers of Lilly, Pfizer and Regeneron, all U.S. firms.<\/p>\n
“If you notice those 17 letters that he sent to pharma, he crossed out the typed up names for Lilly, Pfizer and Regeneron, and wrote it in pen their names in a sort of more friendly manner,” he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick; Additional reporting by Patrick Wingrove and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Susan Fenton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick LONDON (Reuters) -Wall Street is looking to U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[54653,65,16520,56646,134,527,111,139,69,46745,56645],"class_list":{"0":"post-71458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-astrazeneca","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-eli-lilly","11":"tag-gareth-powell","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-pfizer","18":"tag-regeneron"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}