Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Pfizer to invest $350 million in China biotech hub, first in Asia

Pfizer to invest $350 million in China biotech hub, first in Asia

The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York April 28, 2014.  REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File photoThe Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New YorkThomson Reuters
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc will invest $350 million to build a biotech center in China, the latest in a series of moves by pharma industry giants to set up shop in the world's no. 2 drugs market with the aim of securing faster approvals for their products.
The facility in eastern Hangzhou region - Pfizer's first biotech center in Asia - is expected to be completed by 2018, the firm said in a statement on Tuesday.
Global "Big Pharma" is increasingly looking for smart ways to tap China's healthcare market, estimated by consultancy IMS Health to be worth around $185 billion by 2018. From investing in China facilities to acquisitions, licensing deals and joint ventures, the aim is to seek an edge in dealings with domestic regulators and government.
John Young, group president for Pfizer's essential health division, said in the statement that the Hangzhou facility should "help support China's aim to increase the complexity and value of its manufacturing sector by 2025".
Pfizer said it would "work closely" with local regulators to bring the drugs "to market as soon as possible". The center will mostly on biologic drugs - made from living micro-organisms rather than chemically synthesized - and lower-cost 'biosimilars', of generic versions of biologics.
Pharmaceutical executives have long complained about the slow process of getting drugs to market in China, while others have run up against regulatory roadblocks. Pfizer had to close its vaccine business in the country last year after a license for its top-selling vaccine Prevenar was not renewed.
China's overall healthcare spending is set to hit $1.3 trillion by 2020, but drug market growth has slowed to a low single-digit percentage pace from over 20 percent just four years ago as branded generics have lost their shine and Beijing has looked to drive down prices to keep a lid on costs.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

The richest man in Hong Kong is freaking out about Brexit

The richest man in Hong Kong is freaking out about Brexit

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li kashingLi Ka-shing.Reuters
Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Hong Kong, is super concerned about Brexit — the possibility that the UK could leave the European Union after a closely contested referendum on Thursday.
Li said to Bloomberg:
"If Brexit happens, it will be detrimental to the UK and it will have a negative impact to the whole of Europe ... Of course I hope that the UK doesn’t leave the EU."
Li is the chairman of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd., a company that has made him the 24th richest man in the world with a net worth of $28.6 billion,according to Bloomberg.
It's an energy, infrastructure, and telecom holding company that happens to derive 37% of its profit from customers in the UK. He also owns a real estate development firm.
Three months ago, Li said that he would pull money out of the UK if it left the EU. This is pretty significant, given that he has said that he wants to create the biggest mobile-phone carrier in the UK.
On Monday, billionaire investor George Soros, who famously shorted the British pound and "broke the Bank of England" back in the '90s, warned that Brexit could pull the pound down 20%.
bi graphics what's brexit anywaySamantha Lee/Business Insider

Why Britain left

Why Britain left

nigel farage brexit celebratingNigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), makes a statement after Britain voted to leave the European Union in London. Toby Melville/Reuters
I said goodnight to a gloomy party of Leave-minded Londoners a few minutes after midnight. The paper ballots were still being counted by hand. Only the British overseas territory of Gibraltar had reported final results.
Yet the assumption of a Remain victory filled the room-and depressed my hosts. One important journalist had received a detailed briefing earlier that evening of the results of the government's exit polling: 57 percent for Remain.
The polling industry will be one victim of the Brexit vote. A few days before the vote, I met with a pollster who had departed from the cheap and dirty methods of his peers to perform a much more costly survey for a major financial firm. His results showed a comfortable margin for Remain. Ten days later, anyone who heeded his expensive advice suffered the biggest percentage losses since the 2008 financial crisis.
But there will be other casualties too, of course. Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned. It seems improbable that Jeremy Corbyn, the hapless old radical who bumbled into the leadership of the Labour Party, can long outlast him. In the opening hour of trading on Friday morning, 120 billion pounds of stock market value evaporated.
EU nationals working in the United Kingdom must wonder how long they can stay, and so must British retirees now enjoying the sun of Spain, Italy, and southern France. Will London's overheated property market come off the boil? What's the future of the vast industry that finances and insures the commerce of the European continent?
For Americans, there are other questions. The U.S. government has long favored Britain-in-Europe, both because the U.K.-EU single market speeds U.S. business on the continent, and because U.S. policymakers have long worried about the statism and anti-Americanism likely to prevail in an EU from which Britain is absent.
"I think Europe is strengthened by Britain's participation. I think our overall Western world economic strength is likewise improved and strengthened by Britain's participation." So saidPresident Gerald Ford on the eve of the 1975 British referendum on entry into the EU, and his words could have been repeated by any or all of his successors.
But here's a domestic question for American leaders and thinkers.
FILE PHOTO: Britain's  Prime Minister David Cameron (R) and London Mayor Boris Johnson sit on an underground train as they head to Westminster after local election campaigning in Harrow, London May 12, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Rousseau/Pool/File PhotoBoris Johnson (R) and David Cameron (L). Thomson Reuters
The force that turned Britain away from the European Union was the greatest mass migration since perhaps the Anglo-Saxon invasion. 630,000 foreign nationals settled in Britain in the single year 2015. Britain's population has grown from 57 million in 1990 to 65 million in 2015, despite a native birth rate that's now below replacement. On Britain's present course, the population would top 70 million within another decade, half of that growth immigration-driven.
British population growth is not generally perceived to benefit British-born people. Migration stresses schools, hospitals, and above all, housing. The median house price in London already amounts to 12 times the median local salary. Rich migrants outbid British buyers for the best properties; poor migrants are willing to crowd more densely into a dwelling than British-born people are accustomed to tolerating.
This migration has been driven both by British membership in the European Union and by Britain's own policy: The flow of immigration to the U.K. is almost exactly evenly divided between EU and non-EU immigration.
And more is to come, from both sources: Much of the huge surge of Middle Eastern and North African migrants to continental Europe since 2013 seems certain to arrive in Britain; as Prime Minister David Cameron likes to point out, Britain has created more jobs since 2010 than all the rest of the EU combined.
The June 23 vote represents a huge popular rebellion against a future in which British people feel increasingly crowded within-and even crowded out of-their own country: More than 200,000 British-born people leave the U.K. every year for brighter futures abroad, in Australia above all, the United States in second place.
Now the American question:
By uncanny coincidence, EU referendum day in the U.K. coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that halts President Obama's program of executive amnesty for young illegal immigrants and their parents, an estimated 5 million people.
American policymakers-like their U.K. and EU counterparts-have taken for granted that an open global economy implies (and even requires) the mass migration of people. Yet this same mass migration is generating populist, nativist reactions that threaten that same open economy: The anti-EU vote in the U.K., the Donald Trump campaign for president in the United States.
Is it possible that leaders and elites had it all wrong? If they're to save the open global economy, maybe they need to protect their populations better against globalization's most unwelcome consequences-of which mass migration is the very least welcome of them all?
students Brexit EUBritish students hold UK and European Union flags in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Vidal
If any one person drove the United Kingdom out of the European Union, it was Angela Merkel, and her impulsive solo decision in the summer of 2015 to throw open Germany-and then all Europe-to 1.1 million Middle Eastern and North African migrants, with uncountable millions more to come.
Merkel's catastrophically negative example is one that perhaps should be avoided by U.S. politicians who seek to avert Trump-style populism in the United States. Instead, the politician who most directly opposes Donald Trump-presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton-is doubling down on Merkelism.
Hillary Clinton's first reaction to the Supreme Court decision on executive amnesty looks at the issue exclusively and entirely from the point of view of the migrants themselves: "Today's heartbreaking #SCOTUS immigration ruling could tear apart 5 million families facing deportation. We must do better."
That U.S. citizens might have different interests-and that it is the interests of citizens that deserve the highest attention of officials elected by those citizens-went unsaid and apparently unconsidered. But somebody is considering it. And those somebodies, in their many millions, are being heard from this year: loud, clear, and angry.
Read the original article on The Atlantic. Check out The Atlantic's Facebook, newsletters and feeds. Copyright 2016. Follow The Atlantic on Twitter.

Here is Jamie Dimon's Brexit memo to all JPMorgan staff on what happens now

Here is Jamie Dimon's Brexit memo to all JPMorgan staff on what happens now

JP Morgan Chase and Company CEO Jamie DimonJPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon. Getty
Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, just sent a memo, as seen by Business Insider, to all of the investment bank's employees across the world about what the bank plans to do next after Britain shockingly voted Thursday to leave the European Union.
Mary Erdoes, the head of Asset Management at JPMorgan, cosigned the memo, as did Daniel Pinto, the head of the Corporate & Investment Bank and of the bank's Europe, Middle East, and Africa division.
The note seems to seek calm among employees and insists that negotiations for the British exit from the EU, or Brexit, will take years.
Only three weeks ago, Dimon said in a speech that JPMorgan could move an undisclosed number of its 16,000 UK-based workers to Europe if Britain were to vote for a Brexit. While these are not job cuts, it could see roles being moved elsewhere.
Here is the note in full:
British citizens voted yesterday to begin a new, independent relationship with the European Union. This decision is a seminal moment in European politics and in the history of the United Kingdom.
J.P. Morgan has 16,000 employees in the U.K. We are extremely proud of the work they do and our long history in the country. Regardless of today's outcome, we will maintain a large presence in London, Bournemouth and Scotland, serving local clients as we have for more than 150 years.
The framework of the U.K.'s engagement with the EU, including trade agreements, will be negotiated over a period of years. For the moment, we will continue to serve our clients as usual, and our operating model in the U.K. remains the same.
In the months ahead, however, we may need to make changes to our European legal entity structure and the location of some roles. While these changes are not certain, we have to be prepared to comply with new laws as we serve our clients around the world. We will always do our best to take care of our people and do the right thing during times of change.
We recognize the potential for market volatility over the next few weeks and we are ready to help our clients work through it. As of today, there are no changes to the structure of our clients' relationships with JPMorgan Chase or their ability to work with our firm, but again this may change in the coming months or years.
We are hopeful that policymakers will recognize the immense value created through a continued open economic engagement between the U.K. and EU members. As negotiations offer more clarity over the coming months, we will communicate with you and with our clients regarding any relevant changes.
Jamie Dimon
Daniel Pinto
Mary Erdoes

BREXIT STUNS MARKETS, DOW FALLS 600 POINTS: Here's what you need to know

BREXIT STUNS MARKETS, DOW FALLS 600 POINTS: Here's what you need to know

trader floor brexit historyREUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Friday was a historic day in markets after the UK's vote to leave the EU shocked global markets and sent risk assets the world over into a tailspin.
Looking just at US markets, overnight futures cratered as S&P 500 futures went limit-down - meaning that trading was halted - after falling 5%.
After a small bounce following the market open, US stocks slid through the afternoon and closed off the lows but with sharp losses that erased year-to-date gains for the S&P 500 and Dow.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell over 4% on Friday, the biggest one-day drop since 2011.
This was an absolutely manic day in markets that saw massive dislocations across asset classes - a day of market action, we imagine, many won't soon forget.

Scoreboard

  • Dow: 17,400.8, -610.3, (-3.4%)
  • S&P 500: 2,037.4, -75.9, (-3.6%)
  • Nasdaq: 4,708, -202.1, (-4.1%)
  • FTSE 100: 6.138, -199, (-3.1%)
  • Euro Stoxx 50: 2,779, -258, (-8.5%)
  • GBPUSD: $1.367, -8%
  • 10-year Treasury: 1.57%
  • Gold: $1,322, +4.6%
  • WTI crude oil: $47.70, -4.8%

Brexit

It happened.
On Thursday, Britons took to the polls in the UK's EU referendum, voting to leave the EU in a vote that went against betting markets and the financial market's conventional wisdom.
Following this result, financial markets were sent into a tailspin with futures diving overnight, the British pound collapsing, and US stocks, after finding some stability early in the day on Friday, tumbling into the close as the Dow and S&P 500 wiped out all of their gains for 2016 in one fell swoop.
Amid this frantic risk-off market action, gold and US Treasurys rallied.
The most jittery part of the business world following this result was the financial sector, with a number of Wall Street banks sending around memos to reassure staff who, in turn, you'd imagine will seek to reassure nervous clients. Portia Crowe has the rundown of bank memos here.

Clinton, Trump, Obama

As expected, the three biggest players in US politics right now, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as well as the actual president, Barack Obama, were out saying their piece on the Brexit vote.
Clinton said simply that she respects the choice that the UK's citizens made and added that, "Our first task has to be to make sure that the economic uncertainty created by these events does not hurt working families here in America." This statement wasn't all that different fromObama's statement.
Trump used the decision to take something resembling a victory lap, saying at a press conference at one of his golf courses in Scotland: "It's always the will of the people. Ultimately, that wins out. They've taken back their independence. And that's a very, very important thing."
In the run-up to the Brexit vote, the easy parallel to make from an American point of view is that the Leave camp shared many similarities with the Trump campaign. And here we are.
Much as the conventional wisdom ahead of the Brexit vote held that eventually the Remain camp would prevail, right now the same elite consensus has coalesced around the idea that Clinton will most likely be our next president. Josh Barro argues that there are three reasons to be sanguine about Clinton's chances and just one reason - basically a recession - to worry that he could win.
The polling gap between Clinton and Trump right now is a bit wider than final polling between the Leave and Remain camps showed, but after a shock vote like this, it is worth keeping your guard up ahead of the actual vote.
Or, as Brett LoGiurato wrote on Friday, all bets are now off.

Reaction, commentary, everything else

The Federal Reserve said in a statement on Friday morning that it was monitoring the situation in global markets closely and stood ready to provide liquidity if needed.

Monday, June 20, 2016

'Finding Dory' makes box office history with $136 million opening weekend

'Finding Dory' makes box office history with $136 million opening weekend

finding dory breaks box office record pixar"Finding Dory." Pixar
Good things come to those that wait - at least in the case of a forgetful blue fish named Dory.
Some 13 years after "Finding Nemo" first hit theaters, Pixar and Disney's sequel "Finding Dory"made a huge splash, landing the biggest domestic opening of all time for an animated title with $136.2 million from 4,305 theaters.
"Dory" easily topped the box-office chart, although Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart's action comedy also pleased in its opening, earning a solid $34.5 million from 3,508 theaters to come in No. 2.
Overseas, "Finding Dory" grossed $50 million as it rolled out in 32% of the marketplace for a global bow of $186.2 million, including a Pixar-best of $17.5 million in China and $7.6 million in Australia.
In North America, "Finding Dory" - grabbing an A CinemaScore - is a needed boost for the summer box office, which has seen a number of sequels underperform. It also reminds of the power of families in driving mega openings.
The previous crown holder for top animated launch was DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek the Third," which debuted to $121.6 million in 2007. Until now, Pixar's best was "Toy Story 3" (2010) with $110.3 million.
"Finding Dory's" Friday haul of $55.2 million marked the largest single day in history for an animated film, eclipsing the record $47 million earned by "Shrek the Third" on its first Saturday. "Dory" kicked things off by earning $9.2 million in Thursday-night previews, likewise a record for an animated film, besting last year's "Minions" ($6.2 million).
Directed by Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane, the sequel sees "Finding Nemo" voice stars Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks returning to voice the roles of Dory and Marlin, respectively. Newcomer Hayden Rolence voices the character Nemo.
The tale centers on Dory's attempts to reunite with her parents, whom she lost years ago. Accompanied by Nemo and Marlin, Dory arrives at a marine institute, where she engages with new friends, including a white beluga whale named Destiny (Ty Burrell), a white shark (Kaitlin Olson), and a cranky octopus (Ed O'Neill).
"Central Intelligence," pairing Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart on the big screen for the first time, earned an A- CinemaScore and skewed slightly female (51%). It came in ahead of last summer's action comedy, Melissa McCarthy's "Spy," which debuted to $29 million.
"Central Intelligence," directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, follows a CIA agent (Johnson), a one-time teenage geek returning home for his high-school reunion, who enlists his former classmate (Hart) to help him complete a mission. Amy Ryan and Aaron Paul co-star in the movie.
New Line, Warner Bros. and Universal teamed on "Central Intelligence," which cost $50 million to produce.
Read the original article on The Hollywood Reporter. Copyright 2016. Follow The Hollywood Reporter on Twitter.

Antitrust regulators worry about proposed Cigna-Anthem merger: WSJ

Antitrust regulators worry about proposed Cigna-Anthem merger: WSJ

The office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California February 5, 2015.  REUTERS/Gus Ruelas/File PhotoThe office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California Thomson Reuters
(Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators are concerned about health insurer Anthem Inc's proposed acquisition of Cigna Corp and not sure the companies can offer enough concessions to maintain competition in the industry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Both companies have scheduled meetings this week with top U.S. Department of Justice officials, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Some of the sources said the DOJ had not yet made a decision on whether to sue to block the deal.
Wall Street does not seem convinced the deal will go through, as evidenced in the wide spread between Anthem's offer and Cigna's share price. As of the market close on Friday, Cigna shares traded at a 32.5 percent discount to the offer, which has an equity value of about $44 billion.
Anthem announced plans to buy Cigna last summer. Also pending is Aetna Inc's acquisition of Humana Inc which faces significant antitrust concern as well. That deal is valued at about $34 billion.
(Reporting by Rodgrigo Campos in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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