Forget about saving British big pharma – it’s little pharma we should be helping

Readers in all sorts of places — at the club bar, over a birthday lunch, even along the church pew — had been telling me I was wrong not to subscribe to the ‘save AstraZeneca’ campaign, and too complacent about the future of British science when I wrote: ‘the game is Pfizer’s for the taking, as soon as the price is right’. Now Pfizer has retreated, it looks like the battle has been won by the bandwagon I missed, whose crew included Ed Miliband, the Unite union, and former AZ chief Sir Tom McKillop — better remembered as the chairman of RBS who presided over its catastrophic merger with ABN-Amro, so at least speaking from rueful experience.

But the reality is that the game was not taken because the price was wrong. When Pfizer finally upped its offer to £55 per share, AZ’s board did not respond that in the cause of ‘British science’ they would have no truck with Yankee asset-strippers at any price.