No surprises yesterday in Zurich. Another bad session for the European lists saw Novartis as the only positive title on the Swiss market, which in any case had lost ground in the last few days. Fears of a rekindling of the crisis, immediately transferred to the stock markets, inevitably lead investors towards sectors «refuge» such as the pharmaceutical one, considered anti-cyclical.
And so yesterday Novartis achieved progress above 1% in the session despite certainly not positive news from Great Britain. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (London authority under the National Health Service) has declared that it will not recommend the use of a Novartis cancer drug, Gleevec, as a post-surgery treatment for stomach cancer patients . The stop is not insignificant considering that Gleevec, or Glivec, is Novartis' second best-selling product after Diovan (it generated four billion dollars in revenues last year).
Finance&Markets 26 August 2010 – pag. 15
