BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) - Roche Holding AG missed full-year profit forecasts due to disappointing sales of key cancer drugs and gave a Lackluster outlook for 2010, pointing up the wider challenges facing global drugmakers. Roche has focused on developing promising new drugs rather than cutting costs as a way to combat looming patent losses, but still faces some of the same ...

Swiss drug maker Novartis AG on Tuesday reported a 54 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit to $2.32 billion on strong sales and favorable exchange rates, and announced the appointment of Joe Jimenez as its new chief executive. Earnings per share rose 53 percent to $1.01 from $0.66 in the same quarter of 2008, when Novartis posted ...

The head of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis on Tuesday warned that governments now trying to cancel swine flu vaccine contracts might not be dealt with so swiftly in the next pandemic. Chairman and chief executive Daniel Vasella said those that had been reliable partners would be favoured. "The same governments that exerted a lot of pressure on the industry (...) to ...

BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) - Novartis AG handed drugs head Joe Jimenez its top job on Tuesday with a mission to guide the Swiss drugmaker through ever-increasing competition to its key medicines. The chatty 50-year-old American steps up after just over two years running Novartis's dominant drugs unit and faces a tough industry landscape as more blockbuster medicines lose patent protection ...