3 August 2017 - Fierce rivals in pharma are co-operating.

The modern pharmaceutical firm lives or dies on the strength of its drug portfolio. As patents expire on lucrative medicines, they must replace the income that has been lost by inventing new drugs, or buying them in from outside. Both paths are expensive. 

But the costs of failure are greater, and this is how it was possible for a large and successful firm—such as British-based AstraZeneca—to shed 15% of its market value in a single day last week. Around £10bn ($13.2bn) was lost on news of disappointing results in one of its clinical trials (its shares have since rebounded by 4%).

Read The Economist article