Stock Commentary - Europe - week to March 5, 2007

EUROPEAN: bourses spiralled lower throughout the reporting week to March 5, after the devastation on the Chinese and other Asian markets at the start of the period. Leading stock market indexes fell to new lows for the current year, and not a single drug stock tracked saw any rise over the week, with many falls in double-digits. In ZURICH, little Speedel slumped 14.3%, although the day after this reporting period it leapt 26%, on the news that marketing partner Novartis had received US marketing approval for its antihypertensive drug Tekturna (aliskiren; see page 18). Novartis, which also gained on this news, was down 5.8% on the reporting week. In PARIS, Sanofi-Aventis outperformed the CAC 40's 6.6% decline with a 4.2% fall, having benefited from the news that a US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended approval of its H5N1 pandemic flu vaccine and a European Data and Safety Monitoring Board saying that placebo patients in a study investigating its Gardasil (quadrivalent human papilloma virus [types 6, 11, 16,18] recombinant vaccine) should be moved onto the vaccine because of its clear benefits (both items reported in the Marketletter of March 5). bioMerieux saw a downturn of 7.8%.

LONDON: share prices moved lower in line with the global situation, with SkyePharma the worst performer, falling 11.7%. This was despite the favorable reaction to the firm buying out Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate) US development partner New River (Marketletter February 26) and US approval for this attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder drug (Marketletter March 5). Drug majors AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, outperformed, down 4.2% and 3.6%, respectively.