America’s puzzling yen intervention
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What headlines open today’s FT News Briefing and why does the yen intervention matter?
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, August 4th, and this is your FT News Briefing. The boss of Novo Nordisk outlines his deal-making ambitions. And Russia is preparing a workaround for another set of EU sanctions. Plus, the U.S. and Japan have banded together to prop up the struggling yen. But why?
It's been nearly 30 years since we've seen anything similar to this. So these things are super, super rare.
I'm Victoria Craig, and here's the news you need to start your day.
Shares of AstraZeneca slid on Monday as investors raised concerns about a potential mega-merger with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb. That's news the FT broke on Sunday. Possible risks to the deal include antitrust hurdles and the ultimate value of the deal. But regardless of what happens, it probably won't be the end of dealmaking in the industry. And that is because the pair are not the only ones with M&A on their minds. The FT's Aaron Kirchfeld joins me now. He recently sat down with the boss of pharma heavyweight Novo Nordisk at the company's headquarters. Hey, Aaron, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me again.
Two days in a row. Lucky us. Mike Dustar told you that big mergers and acquisitions are not out of the realm of possibility for his company. So what might he be open to?
Yeah. So since Mike has taken over, I think his main mantra has been kind of shaking things up at the Danish drug maker. And that includes doing deals. And he was quite vocal when I asked him about what kind of size of deals he'd be open to. And he really said deals of all sizes. And he mentioned the fact that they had been bidding. for Metzera, which was 10 billion, which he said, in my eyes, that's not even a big deal. So he's open to doing bigger deals, even transformational ones. He also stressed that it's not only about sizes, about what gap it fills, because for him, it really comes down to replenishing or expanding the pipeline.
And that's a huge concern for drug makers across the industry with these so-called patent cliffs, which is when patents for drugs expire and are allowed to be made into generics.
Absolutely right. And that's why we see a lot of M&A deals in biotech, because you see the big prime pharma companies buying up promising therapies from the smaller guys. Or you see even like we reported over the weekend, even the biggest pharma companies looking at transatlantic mergers. And that would add a lot of various drugs and pipelines.
Now, when it comes to Novo, Deustar was brought in a year ago to bring about change, really to try and steady the ship. So what has he been focused in that time, and how does he view the progress that he's made so far?
So it was almost exactly a year ago that he took over and he made some tough decisions right away, which included 9,000 job cuts, which is probably the biggest ever layoffs in Denmark. It's a country that doesn't usually do big layoffs. And then the board was revamped and he had to lower the guidance, something that also Nova had done before he joined.
Why did AstraZeneca shares slide and what are investor concerns about mega-merger talk?
So the company was really after becoming Europe's most valuable company because because they really invented or at least pioneered the weight loss therapy drugs, they ran into stiff competition from Eli Lilly, the Americans, as well as generic makers. And so they brought him in really to shake things up. And I think his big success so far has been the successful launch of the WeGoV weight loss pill.
Now, Novo is going to report earnings tomorrow. What are we expecting? Are we expecting to see any progress on that weight loss pill front in those results? And how are investors feeling about the company's trajectory?
Yeah, I think we can safely assume that there'll be an update on the pill sales. He said in June that they'd already reached 3 million in prescriptions in the U.S., which is one of the most successful launches of a pharmaceutical drug in U.S. history. And he told us in the interview that those sales have only accelerated, even though Ally Lilly has also introduced vaccines.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What headlines open today’s FT News Briefing and why does the yen intervention matter?
0:03–3:13
2
Why did AstraZeneca shares slide and what are investor concerns about mega-merger talk?
3:13–5:45
3
What dealmaking ambitions did Novo Nordisk’s new CEO describe in his first year?
5:45–8:07
4
How is Novo Nordisk planning to use M&A to replenish its drug pipeline?
8:07–11:49