Sir Thomas Fulton Wilson McKillop, FRS, FRSE (born 19 March 1943) is a Scottish chemist, who was CEO of AstraZeneca PLC from 1999 until 2006 and chairman of the RBS Group from 2006 until 2008. (wikipedia)
The typical review time in this division, the period to approval, is something like two years,
I'm not at all frightened, ... We are big enough now -- we now have the scale from this merger to compete.
The history of this division, partly because of the devices element, is that reviews and approvals tend to be very slow, so we made realistic to conservative assumptions on what the review period should be.
We will fight in the courts, ... We will argue very strongly that unless a generic manufacturer has discovered its own way that is free of our patents of formulating the product, that they're in breach of our patents. We think we have a good chance of winning.
A continued strong sales performance, especially for the five key growth products, together with benefits arising from productivity initiatives across the entire company, has produced an outstanding result ... and is reflected in an increase in our financial targets for the full year.
While it is still very early into the launch phase, the first four weeks of prescription data suggests that this could be the fastest ever uptake of a new product in the U.K.,
We are big enough at this stage to grow our business strongly. I am not ruling out what you may describe as bolt-on acquisitions -- what I am ruling out is a significant merger or anything like that.
It's true that it has taken a little bit longer than we expected but that kind of thing happens with regulatory authorities -- nothing unusual in that,
We have no strategic need to be bigger -- none at all. So there is no reason to engage in major M&A activity.
