Until about the third week of January, only a few pharmaceutical executives, drug-safety inspectors and dogged China hawks cared that a large share of the world’s supply of antibiotics depends on a handful of Chinese factories.
These include a cluster in Inner Mongolia, a northern province of windswept deserts, grasslands and unlovely industrial towns. Then came the covid-19 outbreak, and quarantine controls that locked down factories, ports and whole cities across China.
Chinese leaders insist that they are well on the way to conquering the virus, allowing them to reopen “leading enterprises and key links with important influence” in global supply chains. A victory over the novel coronavirus will once again demonstrate “the notable advantages of leadership by the Communist Party of China”, President Xi Jinping told 170,000 officials by video-conference on February 23rd. But even if all those boasts come true, foreign governments and business bosses will not quickly forget a frightening lesson: for some vital products, they depend on one country.
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Source: The Economist
Avivi joins Bayer fresh off a yearlong stint as chief marketing officer of Advance Auto Parts, which followed about three years spent as marketing chief of another auto parts company, Tenneco. Rounding out her nearly 30-year career in marketing are leadership roles at consumer goods giants Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble.
Air Liquide S.A. (Paris) is continuing its development with the acquisition of Homecare activities in Belgium and the Netherlands. The two entities acquired in Belgium and the Netherlands support 10,000 patients living with respiratory insufficiency, sleep apnea syndrome or requiring infusion or nutrition treatments.
US-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to pay approximately $4.9 billion in cash to acquire Alpine Immune Sciences, a compatriot biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing innovative, protein-based immunotherapies.
