For­mer Puma ex­ec agrees to prison time, penal­ty on in­sid­er trad­ing case; Ex-GSK boss Wit­ty to lead UK’s new ‘break­through’ pro­gram

→ Puma’s for­mer reg­u­la­to­ry chief has plead guilty to charges he prof­it­ed off of in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion he gleaned at the biotech. He was charged a lit­tle more than a year ago for trad­ing on the com­pa­ny stock af­ter find­ing out about de­vel­op­ments re­lat­ed to ner­a­tinib. In the set­tle­ment he agreed to pay $1.6 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Reuters, and not fight any prison sen­tence high­er than 37 months.

→ For­mer GSK CEO An­drew Wit­ty will head up a new pan­el in the UK which will be charged with ad­vanc­ing ac­cess to 5 new drugs and de­vices each year. In the gov­ern­ment scheme, life sci­ences com­pa­nies will get the chance to grab some ear­ly fi­nanc­ing for de­vel­op­ment work on new “break­through” ther­a­pies, while the pan­el will look to speed ac­cess to the pub­lic with an ac­cel­er­at­ed re­view process on pric­ing. And the British gov­ern­ment ex­pects to be re­ward­ed with some fa­vor­able whole­sale prices. Wit­ty has been tak­ing a num­ber of po­si­tions on biotech boards and re­cent­ly joined the ven­ture group Hat­teras, where he’s had some long­stand­ing ties.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER