Stock Commentary - Europe - week to Feb 11, 2008

18 February 2008

EUROPEAN: bourses were all down significantly in the reporting period to February 11, with particularly heavy falls on February 5 on the back of Wall Street's plunge, having had a relatively positive previous week. Pharmaceutical stocks generally followed the negative trend. In FRANKFURT, there was an across-the-board decline, with MorphoSys dropping 5.9% after its recent strong advances, and drug majors Bayer and Merck KGaA falling 1.3% and 2.9%, respectively. PARIS saw a 4.3% decline in Sanofi-Aventis, but the stock outperformed the CAC 40's 5.8% drop, ahead of reporting 2007 financial results (see page 5), following which it put on a 2.4% gain. On the AMSTERDAM stock exchange, the worst performer was Crucell, which fell 7.0%, despite the firm announcing a reduction in its fourth-quarter 2007 loss (see page 10). ZURICH saw declines of 4.1% and 1.1%, respectively, for drug majors Roche and Novartis, while Speedel gained 2.8% on no particular news since its downgrade last month by JP Morgan analysts.

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Chairman, Sanofi Aventis UK



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