GSK head ‘has three-part plan for company’

Andrew Witty, chief executive officer of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is the subject of a profile in the latest issue of the Economist, which outlines his three-part plan to transform the pharmaceutical company.

The first of these is to end the company’s obsession with discovering blockbuster pharmaceutical products.

Mr Witty described the continuing search for such drugs as “finding a needle in haystack right when you need it”, while such drugs are also vulnerable to regulatory crackdowns and lawsuits from generics manufacturers.

He is also calling for an expansion beyond prescription-drug sales in the rich world to a more diversified revenue stream with a push into emerging markets.

Lastly, he has been engaging in dialogue with the biggest buyers of drugs such as the NHS to ascertain what future drugs they will pay for.

Often in the pharmaceutical industry, companies innovate as they see fit, with major purchasers then buying their products – but the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence has now been set up to conduct explicit cost-benefit analyses of new drugs.

Last month, GSK announced a four per cent increase in year-on-year turnover to 5,874 million pounds for the second quarter of the 2008 fiscal year.