The Avandia reckoning will have left Mr Witty with a familiar sinking feeling. Data published last week by the watchdog Public Citizen revealed that no company has been more heavily penalised in the US than GSK. Not including Avandia, it paid $4.5bn in penalties between 1991 and 2010.
It is far from alone. Total penalties for pharmaceutical companies in the US over that period came to a little over $20bn, more than any other industry was fined by regulators. And you can add on tens of billions more to cover the cost of litigation from victims of drugs scandals – Merck has put aside $5bn for law suits related to its painkiller Vioxx, for example.
Nor do the pharmaceuticals companies face trouble in the US only. Europe too has begun to zero in on the industry in recent years, though financial penalties here have so far been smaller.
Regulatory actions have spanned a multitude of sins, most of which Mr Witty and his fellow chief executives would argue have now been consigned to history. But with governments around the world spending more than ever on healthcare – and thus drugs – the pressure on regulators not to give the industry an inch gets greater by the day. There are bound to be further scalps.
Friday, February 04, 2011
David Prosser on GSK's CEO Andrew Witty - The Independent
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