Big Pharma’s vaccine victory lap may be cut short. The industry’s triumph in dispensing inoculations less than a year after the discovery of the deadly coronavirus has partially vindicated the business models of groups like Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. But as governments took on much of the risk, pharma groups’ pricing will remain a target after the pandemic.
Koninklijke Philips Chief Executive Frans van Houten wants to get out of the hospital. A key plank of his growth strategy for the $50 billion Dutch medical-technology group is selling equipment that allows doctors to care for their patients remotely, a field known as telehealth, which got a bump during the Covid-19 pandemic. The $2.8 billion acquisition of heart-monitor specialist BioTelemetry serves that purpose - but comes at a heart-stopping price.
Corona Capital is a column updated throughout the day by Breakingviews columnists around the world with short, sharp pandemic-related insights.
The politicisation, and even weaponisation, of ESG investing is a growing concern. What used to be a reasonably well-mapped and steadily expanding universe of disclosure, compliance and risk measurements affecting market capital allocation has now become a nebulous and sometimes disingenuous race to rate, judge and sanction.
The world’s biggest banks entered the Covid-19 crisis in good shape and are emerging with an embarrassment of riches. Wall Street lenders made huge profit from trading in turbulent markets and are ending 2020 awash with capital. Their mission for 2021 is finding an acceptable way to spend it.
Just as every dog has its day, every business model has its SPAC. Barkbox, best known for subscription boxes filled with toys and treats for the family pooch, is going public through a so-called special-purpose acquisition company at a $1.6 billion valuation. It’s smart to pounce on the opportunity created by the petcare boom, and by blank-check companies that create an alternative to traditional initial public offerings. But another company, Chewy, already
Margrethe Vestager is sending mixed messages to big U.S. technology groups. Days after vowing to crack down on companies like Facebook and Amazon.com through a major new legislative effort, the European Commission’s antitrust tsar on Thursday approved with conditions a $2.1 billion purchase of Fitbit by Alphabet’s Google. It sets a risky precedent for future tech M&A.
European regulators’ cautious lifting of a ban on bank dividends leaves investors in limbo, plus details of an unusually bold growth strategy from Credit Suisse. And the collapse of China’s WeWork-like apartment rental middlemen has left many young tenants homeless and in debt.
China could be doing Tencent a small favour. The technology titan’s acquisitive ways have led to a dominant position in online books, music streaming and e-sports. That strategy looks increasingly unsustainable as the country’s trustbusters intensify their scrutiny. Fewer deals might be better for the company in the long run anyway.
Joe Biden’s cabinet can benefit from leaning into the free market. Investors are flooding into companies that could bring both energy and transportation into a greener and more efficient future. That should help the U.S. president-elect’s nominees to lead those respective agencies, Jennifer Granholm and Pete Buttigieg, in their roles. That’s assuming they can lift – not implement – red tape.
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