Chi­na has be­come a CEO-lev­el pri­or­i­ty for multi­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies: the trend and the im­pli­ca­tions

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Af­ter a “hot” pe­ri­od of rapid growth be­tween 2009 and 2012, and a rel­a­tive­ly “cool­er” pe­ri­od of slow­er growth from 2013 to 2015, Chi­na has once again be­come a top-of-mind pri­or­i­ty for the CEOs of most large, multi­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies.

At the In­ter­na­tion­al Phar­ma Fo­rum, host­ed in March in Bei­jing by the R&D Based Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal As­so­ci­a­tion Com­mit­tee (RD­PAC) and the Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Re­search and Man­u­fac­tur­ers of Amer­i­ca (PhRMA), no few­er than sev­en CEOs of ma­jor multi­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firms par­tic­i­pat­ed, in­clud­ing GSK, Eli Lil­ly, LEO Phar­ma, Mer­ck KGaA, Pfiz­er, Sanofi and UCB. A few days ear­li­er, the CEOs of sev­er­al oth­er large multi­na­tion­als at­tend­ed the Chi­na De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum, an an­nu­al busi­ness fo­rum host­ed by the re­search arm of Chi­na’s State Coun­cil. It’s hard to imag­ine any oth­er coun­try, ex­cept the US, hav­ing such draw­ing pow­er at CEO lev­el.

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