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Spanish firms' stocks drop after Trump says pharma 'getting away with murder'

Fiona Govan
Fiona Govan - [email protected]
Spanish firms' stocks drop after Trump says pharma 'getting away with murder'
Photo: AFP

Spanish pharmaceutical firms saw their stock prices drop on Thursday morning after US President-Elect Donald Trump used part of his chaotic press conference the day before to say that the US should negotiate better prices from drug companies.

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The stock of Granada-based pharmaceutical firm Biosearch, a leader in biotechnology, was trading at 2.90 percent lower on Thursday morning when the Madrid Stock Exchange opened for business.

Share prices for Barcelona-based firm Grifols, one of the world leaders in blood plasma-based products, dropped 1.92 percent by 10am and Madrid-based PharmaMar, a world-leading biopharmaceutical company in the discovery and development of marine-derived anticancer drugs, dropped 1.74 percent.

Shares in Almirall, Spain’s largest drugmaker which specializes in derma products were also down 1.42 percent.

Trump said at his press conference in New York that he would make the pharmaceutical industry bid for government contracts.

“There's very little bidding on drugs. We're the largest buyer of drugs in the world. And yet we don't bid properly. We're going to start bidding,” Trump said. 

US law currently does not allow federal insurance programme Medicare to negotiate drug prices, essentially allowing the pharmaceutical industry to set their own drug prices. 

“They’re getting away with murder,” Trump said about the industry. “Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there is very little bidding.”

It wasn’t just Spanish pharmaceutical companies that felt the immediate effects of Trump’s pledge. The trend was replicated on stock markets across Europe on Thursday morning, with pharmaceutical companies also underperforming in DenmarkGermanyFranceSwitzerland and Italy

Bloomberg Markets reported that the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Sciences Index both had their biggest single-day drops in three months, falling 3 and 1.7 percent respectively. 

 

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