Vintage Year Ahead For Pharmaceutical Firms?

The prospect of good profits growth this year is ahead for thosepharmaceutical companies that anticipate making strong new product launches, according to Daniel Green, writing in the Financial Times.

He says that drug sales in the world's top 10 markets are growing at around 7% per year, which is the fastest growth rate since the start of the decade.

Mr Green sees two important factors behind strong growth this year. These are a relatively benign political environment, freer from the cost containment measures that dominated health care policies around the world in the first half of the decade, and the difference between the rate of new product launches and the expiry of patents on older ones.