At the end of November 2023. Executive director of Astrazenec Pascal Sorit flew out of Sydney to London to deliver a painful political gift on the day when the company privately marked “Super Tuesday”.
After touched, he held meetings back with the then Prime Minister of the UK Rishi Sunak, Chancellor Jeremy Hun and scientific and technological secretary Michelle Donel, according to the people who met people in that regard.
For the British political class starved economic good news, Sorot’s proposal brought a rare cheerfulness: great spread AstrazenecaThe vaccine vaccine in Special, near Liverpool, which would strengthen Britain by claiming that the leading center of life science.
“Pascal was this great executive director of the superstar, Astrazeneca was a rocket ship under his leadership. We took out a red carpet for him,” said the person involved in the government meetings. “These were all smiles, all shaking hand.”
But 14 months later, Astrazeneca dramatically increased the Specto project. He told the officers about the decision last week just hours after the current Chancellor Rachel Reeves appointed Astrazenec one of the British “big companies” in a speech about growth.
The recruitments flew, but how did it all go wrong?
At these meetings in November 2023, Sorit published its plan to build an Astrazenec vaccine production plant in Speke, which produce a very successful vaccine against the nasal flu company, and his desire to make the Next Generation vaccines in Britain.
Sorit mentioned that the Astrazenec-Najveve British company with a market capitalization of 180 billion pounds had not opened production plants in Spain and Germany, touched by an “open wound” for the then conservative government, according to a person drawing at discussions.
A few weeks later, Donelna was invited to visit the place of research and development of the Astrazenec in Cambridge, the Heartland of Britain’s Life Sciences sector, where he treated a great tour of their situation in the research institution.
Shortly thereafter, representatives of Astrazenec presented details about their request for state support: they wanted £ 100m grants to help develop the place.
“The Office of Life Sciences considered it a major coup if I could guarantee the presence of Astrazenec in the UK. They were ready to pull each lever at their disposal to happen, “said a government official from that time.” It was also one of the few political areas in which the civil service, the ministers, was all in sixth gear. “
When the news of the agreement that was assembled leaked to the Financial Times on January 24th. last yearSorit personally called Hunt to express a deep frustration, according to a person familiar at the hearing. The matter was smooth and Hunt intervened to get a final offer of £ 90m in state support across the line. Sorit worked to convince his board.
“I had to overdo it with the care of the treasury due to money for money, and Pascal Sorit had to overlook his committee, who felt that was not enough,” Hunt told FT. “But it was the right thing because it was so strategic for the UK, and there are many chains for top medicines and vaccines in production, not just research.” A person close to Soriota said he could not “flood” the committee.
Soon the connection broke down. At the beginning of March, the English National Institute for Excellence for Health and Care (Nice) rejected Astrazenec’s breast cancer drug, claiming that the price was too high. Other countries – even Scotland – offer a cure that the oncologists have announced as a breakthrough. The decision has angry executives and members of the Company Committee, enhancing wider frustrations due to aggressive drug negotiations in the UK.
Sorit said on Thursday, as Astrazenec discovered Better than expected earnings in the fourth quarter, there was a “zero connection” between Nike’s Emporte and a spectacle of negotiations. Added that the prices of the country of land tax Did he discourage the investment, but again he said it was “absolutely separate from Speke.”
The day after Nice rejection, Hunt announced the investment of Astrazenec in an object of £ 450 million in Speke, while discovered his March – amounting to the unclear obligations that the pharmaceutical company would develop its next generation of vaccines at that place and help in the UK to prepare for the future pandemic.
Two months later, Curser called the General Election and the G
Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers arrived in the Government after Labour’s victory of the landslide July 4, expecting to find all the details on the proposed Astrazenec agreement, agreed with Hunt. But the four high government figures said FT said they could not find a depth check to support subsidies.
“When we entered, we realized that the job announced by Hunt did without any job for money with him,” one official said.
Hunt said it was “nonsense,”
One official recalled that he was looking for Astrazenec for a letter stating the terms of the agreement and two text messages were shown: one offering Astrazenec 90 million pounds, and the other who made a government plan to announce it.
The person added that the older figures in Astrazeneci “constantly raised that their breast cancer cure had not rejected them.”
The new government has started with its own care, on the background of Reeves seeking savings to fulfill what it claimed is a “black hole of £ 22 billion” in public finances.
The Astrazeneca saw this as a muffle of the agreement they had already concluded. “The reality is that they have reopened the agreement and all the problems have emerged,” said the person close to Soriota.
Shaun Grady – now UK Astrazenec Chairman – wrote to the new Government in July, saying that “the key” was that the company received certificates of the specta project to start operating in August, according to the correspondence received by The Times.
Negotiations between Astrazenec and Labor residents continued during the summer of 2024, as deep attention to ministers revealed that the company would invest £ 90 million in research and development related to a place, lower than a pre -fabricated figure of £ 150 million.
An industrial figure exposed to negotiations said that the company considered it to the Government’s “beans” who did not see the “big picture”.
“Treasury officials want the procedure and do it old -fashioned.. But this is different from the way other governments did,” they said, pointing to the contracts that the Astrazenec, among other things, concluded with Canada and Singapore.
In August, representatives of the Astrazenec were invited to the Government and said they would be offered only £ 40m in state aid. The contribution of the Government was based on a proportionate match of what the company had put on, the officials said.
The older figures from the Astrazenec had “Hity Fit”, one official recalled discussion. In conversations with the Government data, representatives of the Astrazenec said that the company could move its plant for the Philadelphia vaccine production, the second place where the nasal flu vaccine produces, according to the people who were referred in discussions.
Alarmated Reeves and Peter Kyle, a scientific secretary, ordered officials to collect a revised package to try to save the project.
In October, the treasury placed £ 78m on the table. Although less than £ 90m offered by Hunt, government officials thought that “mood music” seemed improved. “The company accepted that we put the best legs forward,” one said.
The Astrazeneca took the offer to consider. There was a vicious silence on the project.
In November, Astrazeneca failed to get Emtert again approved by Nice. Next month, the company and other pharmaceutical groups revealed that NHS demands that they restore a higher proportion of sales of their medicines under the return mechanism that limits the costs of the state health care service, which leads to anger throughout the sector. The executives have also been relaxed in the British business world from a national insurance contribution of £ 25 billion in Reeves’ budget.
Medicinal manufacturers were introduced to the Minister of Health WES Stroeting In January to complain As for the refund tax, claiming that Britain made it deeply unconcuding and asking him to reconsider the rate later in the year. The street has not stated on this request so far.
Last Wednesday, Reeves announced the UK as a place for companies that would invest and check the names of the Astrazenec as one of the British “big companies”.
A few hours later, members of her department met online with older figures in Astrazeneca and were told that their offer for the Speke project was rejected. The officers were amazed. The deal was dead. Two days later, the Astrazeneca said to FT that he had partly dropped the project due to “time and reduction of the final offer compared to the proposal of the previous government.”
Some figures on both sides of the negotiations questioned how much the Astrazenec was dedicated to the construction of a place in the first place, since it primarily invests in other medicines, such as oncology drugs.
“The vaccine is excluded by the Astrazenec strategy, not in all their future focus,” said one person close to the company, adding that he wants to focus on research and development in Cambridge or the East Coast of the United States.
One official said the episode echoed the decision of the Astrazeneci to close the research facility in Alderley Park-on an hour of an hour east of Spekea-2013. Moving research and development from northwestern England and down to Cambridge.
The treasury said “because of the change in the original terms, we could not justify by offering the same amount of financing.” Astrazeneca refused to comment.
Sorit said that on Thursday, the Astrazenec was dedicated to the Specke project, and at one point she even increased her offer to £ 500 million.
But he said that the job became “economically impracticable” and the company watched alternative proposals where to expand.
“There was no tension, there was a problem, very good cooperation with everyone involved,” he said. “We are all very disappointed, but it’s a business life.”
