David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, addresses in Great Britain, US investments

US policy decision -makers should take note if biopharmaceutical companies use the investments in Great Britain. Eli Lilly Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks said in an interview with CNBC.

Lilly recently planned a break to create a biotech linkator called Gateway Labs in Great Britain and to join other Biopharma companies that have used investments in the queue with regard to drug prices and other guidelines in Great Britain. This year’s rate of around 23% was higher than expected, which resulted in a widespread setback in the industry.

“Great Britain was a really young man on a long, slow sliding path from a guide in biopharmaceuticals, and that has happened in the past 20 years through a number of political mistakes,” said Ricks. “The most important thing is that your market is really unattractive for us and has become unattractive every year.”

“In connection with a global competition for resources, the global competition for investments, they rate quite badly, and despite a strong academic, scientific basis there,” he added in an interview that Lilly in Virginia is built up in an interview over 5 billion US dollars in the pharmaceutical system.

Ricks said Lilly had led in discussions with the political decision -makers in the British changes in terms of intellectual property and regulation, but interrupted these discussions while waiting for a political reaction from the British government. He said it was possible that possible negotiations between the United States and Great Britain could be through a trade agreement to “get rid of things”, but until the situation changes, it is “quite difficult” to consider there.

“I think this is a message to our or the other that the capital goes where there is a desired, where there are advantages to invest. And at the moment it is not really Great Britain,” he said.

Great Britain and other countries in Europe have prioritized the control of the costs of medication for years. The US legislature recently gave Medicare the opportunity to negotiate drug prices for the first time, and President Donald Trump wants to go further and floating ideas such as linking the drug price in the USA to the interest rate of similar countries. In the meantime, Trump observes the tariffs on pharmaceuticals in one step that increases decades of precedent from the exclusion of medication from the taxes.

Trump wants the European countries to pay less for medication and the USA. Pharmaceutical companies like Lilly said that they agree to this goal, but it is not clear how they will achieve it. European companies have “art to keep prices low”, which makes it difficult to increase prices overseas, said Ricks.

“I think it is difficult to be honest, and that’s why we need the US government and the US trade ambassador as well as the Ministry of Commerce and everyone else to help us,” said Ricks. “If we don’t have an overseas market, I think that this is a big problem.”

“I think the administration spoke about the goals of its pricing policy to increase pricing in industrialized countries and to reduce it in the United States,” he added. “And conceptually we are for it, but we have to see the facts in the ground change in Europe. So far they have not have it, and Great Britain is an excellent example of this.”

Lilly recently increased Mounjaro’s price in Great Britain on the private market. Ricks said it would be “a little thing” for Lilly’s business because these sales are not a large part of the global income, but he pointed out that the United Kingdom falls afterwards. Under limited circumstances, the country only covers the drug against obesity, which means that most people who take it due to weight loss pay out of their own pocket.

“This is all part of the problem that expensive new medication is not listed or you are waiting for three or four, sometimes five years, and then your patent has almost expired. So these are the kind of things we need from our government to change,” said Ricks. “We start a new product in the USA, it is available the next day. This is not the case in Europe, and this type of pressure on companies is one of the reasons why people can recognize the lower prices together with the state -driven systems.”