Comments from Andrew Witty, chief executive officer of pharmaceutical behemoth GlaxoSmithKline, at a recent investor presentation were of interest to more than just his shareholders.

Central to anyone’s strategy in the sector, he recapped, is the fact that an unprecedented number of drugs are due to lose their patent protection over the next few years, setting the pharmaceutical industry ‘immense challenges’ as they look to find alternative revenues. This has contributed to investor perceptions that the sector is ‘higher risk’ and ‘lower growth’.

Witty will now be looking to target ‘fast-growing areas such as vaccines and consumer healthcare and new growth areas such as biopharmaceuticals’, as well as emerging economies.

‘[Vaccines and consumer healthcare] offer significant growth opportunities to GSK through new products and geographic expansion. Moreover, with increasing global trends towards preventative healthcare and self-medication, GSK can be a global leader in meeting the converging needs of customers.’

Providing hope to owners and shareholders in some of the smaller drug and biotech developers, Witty stated that GSK is seeking to increasingly collaborate with external partners. ‘Externalising R&D enables GSK to capture scientific diversity and balance expenditure and risk in drug development. In the future, we believe that up to 50 per cent of GSK’s drug discovery could be sourced from outside the company,’ he said.

A few days later, the £276 million takeover of UK vaccine specialist Acambis by France’s largest drug-maker, Sanofi-Aventis, set a prime example.