Stock Commentary - Europe - week to Jan 14, 2008

21 January 2008

EUROPEAN: bourses were generally lower in the reporting period to January 14 but, having failed to benefit from earlier investors moves into defensive issues, Big Pharma came into its own, with ZURICH seeing a 5.9% rise for Roche and 3.5% for Novartis on January 8, leaving the stocks 5.8% and 2.9% higher, respectively, over the week, while little Actelion was the star with a 12.5% gain on no particular news. PARIS saw strong buying in Sanofi-Aventis, which was up 3.7% against a 0.9% fall in the CAC 40. However, FRANKFURT was least impacted by the defensive drug stock buying, although Merck KGaA ended the week 4.6% higher, having risen 5.3% on January 9. Bayer rose 2.3% but ended the week just marginally higher, up 0.1%. Moreover, on the last reporting day nearly all the European majors saw a decline, as sector players took in profits and analysts downgraded these stocks.

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Chairman, Sanofi Aventis UK



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