US drug giant Eli Lilly halts plans for new base in London as it denounces Britain’s ‘suffocating’ rules and punitive tax regime
A US drug giant has halted plans to build a new base in London, warning that the UK is ‘suffocating’ innovation due to its punitive taxes and regulations.
Eli Lilly’s move comes amid growing concerns among business leaders that Britain’s competitiveness is being undermined by heavy regulations and the high cost of doing business.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, has appointed real estate broker CBRE to explore potential sites for a 6,000-square-foot hub in London designed to support start-up companies as they bring new technologies to market. medical products.
But yesterday it said it might look elsewhere in Europe if the environment doesn’t improve.
Put on hold: US drug giant Eli Lilly was looking at potential locations for a London hub designed to support start-up companies in bringing new products to market
It said: ‘While we believe in the potential of the UK’s biotech talent and share the country’s ambition to be a life sciences superpower, the suffocating commercial climate is currently not inviting investment in the interior.
“The UK needs to do more to reward scientific discoveries through access to innovative medicines to accelerate clinical research and regulatory processes.”
The comments followed those of Stephen Van Soelen, associate vice president of Eli Lilly, who said the UK’s treatment of businesses “really makes companies like ours hesitant to invest in the innovation there,” and that there ‘other places in Europe are to go’.
‘If you actually bring a product to the market, you will not be rewarded for your innovation.
As the old saying goes, unless something changes, nothing changes. The environment has to change’, says Van Soelen.
Eli Lilly has a UK headquarters in Basingstoke in Hampshire and a research center in Bracknell, Berkshire.
But pausing its plans in London is a blow to the government, which aims to turn the UK into a ‘scientific superpower’.
The criticism comes after statements in February from Pascal Soriot, boss of pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, who said a ‘discouraging’ tax system was behind a decision to build a £330 million factory in Ireland rather than the UK .
It had planned a factory in North West England but had moved to Dublin. Astra employs approximately 83,100 people worldwide, of whom more than 8,000 are in the UK.
Other high-ranking figures in the city have raised the alarm. Legal & General boss Sir Nigel Wilson said that while entrepreneurship at British universities was “off scale”, the country was no longer competitive in supporting businesses and risked “falling behind” rivals.
The oil and gas sector has also opposed the government’s tax plans, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe, one of Britain’s richest men and the founder of the chemical group Ineos, warning of the UK’s windfall tax, which has an effective tax rate of 75 percent on the profit. made from the North Sea, threatened to push the sector ‘dead’.
And in the tech industry, Cambridge computer chipmaker Arm has rejected a listing on the London Stock Exchange in favor of an IPO in New York.
The chorus has left the government scrambling to improve the country’s prospects, with plans to relax stock exchange rules.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt would also consider plans to force pension funds to invest part of their huge reserves in UK projects and start-ups.