By James Shotter in Zürich and Andrew Jack in London
Roche’s chief executive has signalled openness to renewed co-operation with counterparts at his Swiss rival Novartis, in a sign of thawing relations between the two Basel-based pharmaceutical groups. Severin Schwan told the Financial Times in an interview: “If the right opportunity comes up, we would be extremely open to talk with Novartis as we would be with all the other players.”
His comments came just two weeks after Christoph Franz was named to replace Franz Humer as chairman of Roche, and a month after Jörg Reinhardt took over from Daniel Vasella as chairman of Novartis.
The changes at the top follow a long and frosty relationship between Mr Humer and Mr Vasella, who had masterminded the purchase of a large strategic stake in Roche at the start of the millennium in anticipation of a possible merger.
Relations between the two men quickly soured, although the companies did co-operate on Xolair and Lucentis, two drugs that Roche controls through its subsidiary Genentech, fully acquired in 2009.
The arrival of Mr Reinhardt sparked discussion of fresh co-operation, and earlier this month, Pierre Landolt, a Novartis board member, even suggested that a merger of the two companies would make sense “from an objective standpoint”.(Más)
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