A cou­ple weeks af­ter ac­tivist at­tack, Glax­o­SmithK­line un­veils big plans to cre­ate a UK biotech hub

A cou­ple weeks af­ter ac­tivist in­vestor El­liott be­gan its long-await­ed at­tack on CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley, Glax­o­SmithK­line has un­veiled a plan to sell over a third of the land at its Steve­nage, UK, site to cre­ate “one of Eu­rope’s largest ‘clus­ters’ for biotech­nol­o­gy” and ear­ly-stage life sci­ences com­pa­nies.

The phar­ma is putting 33 acres up for sale, which GSK says could be de­vel­oped in­to about 100,000 square me­ters of floor space and cre­ate thou­sands of jobs. All it would take, the com­pa­ny says, is a pri­vate de­vel­op­er to in­vest a lit­tle more than $552 mil­lion (£400 mil­lion).

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