The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has concentrated minds in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals sector, where the race is on to develop quick and accurate tests and, all importantly, a vaccine. This, in turn, has turned the spotlight on to the world’s four big vaccine developers: Merck and Pfizer, of the United States, Sanofi, in France, and the London-listed Glaxosmithkline. Between them, they account for about 85 per cent of a worldwide vaccines market worth $35 billion, according to analysts at Bernstein.
Glaxo is the biggest of them all, based on the percentage of its revenues, at 21 per cent, that come from such treatments — and it might be tempting to conclude that Glaxo’s vaccines business is looking a little more valuable from
