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Trump pledge sends Danish pharma firms' stocks down

The Local Denmark
The Local Denmark - [email protected]
Trump pledge sends Danish pharma firms' stocks down
Trump used part of his opening remarks to accuse the pharma industry of "getting away with murder". Photo: Lucas Jackson/Scanpix

Danish pharmaceutical firms saw their stock prices drop on Thursday morning after US President-Elect Donald Trump used part of his chaotic press conference the day before to say that the US should negotiate better prices from drug companies.

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The stock of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk was trading three percent lower on Thursday morning when the Copenhagen Stock Exchange opened for business. The Bagsværd-based firm is the world’s largest maker of diabetes treatments.
 
Shares in Lundbeck, which specialises in psychiatric and neurological disorders, were also down three percent, while Danish firms Bavarian Nordic and Neurosearch dropped 2.5 percent, news agency Ritzau reported. 
 
Trump said at his press conference in New York that he would make the pharmaceutical industry bid for government contracts.
 
“There's very little bidding on drugs. We're the largest buyer of drugs in the world. And yet we don't bid properly. We're going to start bidding,” Trump said. 
 
US law currently does not allow federal insurance programme Medicare to negotiate drug prices, essentially allowing the pharmaceutical industry to set their own drug prices. 
 
“They’re getting away with murder,” Trump said about the industry. “Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there is very little bidding.”
 
It wasn’t just Danish pharmaceutical companies that felt the immediate effects of Trump’s pledge. The trend was replicated on stock markets across Europe on Thursday morning, with pharma firms also underperforming in Sweden, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy

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