THE headlong plunge of shares in Teva, a pharmaceutical giant—down by over 40% since August 2nd—is causing consternation beyond the firm’s shareholders and employees. The company was founded in Jerusalem in 1901, is the largest in Israel and is the country’s only multinational with its headquarters still at home. Since beginning its rapid expansion abroad in the early 1980s it has been called “the nation’s share” by Israelis, whose pension funds have invested heavily in its success.
That prosperity came chiefly thanks to the firm’s most popular proprietary drug, a bestselling medication for multiple sclerosis called Copaxone. Over the past two decades its sales paid for a global spree of buying generic-drugs competitors. Last year Teva completed its most ambitious purchase, of Actavis Generics, an American generics manufacturer, for $40.5bn; financing the deal took its debt to $35bn. But Teva’s transformation into the…Continue reading
Source: economist
An Israeli pharma champion sickens