{"id":322753,"date":"2025-12-18T12:41:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322753\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:41:21","slug":"us-is-the-best-place-for-drug-companies-to-invest-says-boss-of-london-based-gsk-gsk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322753\/","title":{"rendered":"US is the best place for drug companies to invest, says boss of London-based GSK | GSK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The chief executive of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/glaxosmithkline\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GSK<\/a> has declared that the US is the best place for pharmaceutical companies to invest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Emma Walmsley said the US led the world in launches of drugs and vaccines and, alongside China, was the best market <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cwywp3y35ryo\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">for business development<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">She is the latest boss of a leading UK drugmaker to talk up business opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic, after AstraZeneca\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/jul\/29\/astrazeneca-chief-executive-hails-vital-importance-of-us-as-trump-tariffs-loom\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pascal Soriot hailed the \u201cvital importance of the US\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The UK government, which has been trying to strengthen the pharmaceutical sector, confirmed on Wednesday that the proportion of revenues from new medicine sales that companies need to pay back to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/nhs\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NHS<\/a> would fall next year \u2013 from 22.5% to under 15%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Reducing the record clawback rate was a central demand of the sector but negotiations <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/aug\/25\/what-is-the-row-between-wes-streeting-and-pharmaceutical-companies-about\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">broke down in late August<\/a>. Several large companies, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/sep\/12\/astrazeneca-pauses-200m-investment-in-cambridge-research-site\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AstraZeneca<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/sep\/10\/us-drugmaker-merck-scraps-1bn-london-research-centre-and-cuts-125-science-jobs\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">US company MSD\/Merck<\/a>, then cancelled or paused large UK investments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The government has also been pressed into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/dec\/01\/uk-us-agree-zero-tariff-pharmaceuticals-deal\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">spending 25% more on new NHS medicines<\/a> as part of a zero tariff deal with the US administration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Donald Trump, the US president, has criticised other rich countries for paying too little for drugs, leaving the US to shoulder much of the cost of medicines. US prices have historically been much higher, partly because of a complex system of intermediaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The National Institute for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/health\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Health<\/a> and Care Excellence (Nice), which assesses drugs for use on the NHS, will for the first time raise the price threshold at which new medicines are seen to be cost-effective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In a consultation document published on Tuesday, the Department of Health went further and said it wanted to give ministers a limited power<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/consultations\/changes-to-nice-regulations-cost-effectiveness-threshold\/changes-to-nice-regulations-cost-effectiveness-threshold-consultation-document\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> to set the cost-effectiveness threshold<\/a> for new drugs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Spending on medicines is expected to increase by about \u00a31bn over the next three years, depending on which medicines Nice decides to approve and the actual uptake, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). This has raised concerns about less money to pay for health staff and equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The government says the revenue clawback rate for new medicines will drop to 14.5% next year but payment rates for older, branded medicines will remain unchanged at between 10% and 35%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cIt\u2019s good that the amount of revenue companies will need to pay to the UK government has come down in 2026,\u201d said Richard Torbett, the chief executive of the ABPI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Torbett also said the proposed 15% cap for the next three years should give companies more certainty but it was just a first step in making Britain more competitive: \u201cPayment rates remain much higher than in similar countries, and there is work to do to accelerate the NHS\u2019s adoption and use of cost-effective medicines to improve patient care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In her interview with the BBC, Walmsley said GSK would not \u201cshy away\u201d from its interests in the US, where it makes half of its revenues. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/sep\/16\/nhs-must-reverse-decline-medicines-investment-science-minister-patrick-vallance\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GSK recently outlined plans to invest $30bn<\/a> (\u00a323bn) in the US by 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief executive of GSK has declared that the US is the best place for pharmaceutical companies to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-322753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}