Coronavirus Vaccine: AstraZeneca must deliver 50m doses by September or face fines - by Elena Sánchez Nicolás

A Brussels court on Friday (18 June) ordered AstraZeneca to deliver 50 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to EU member states by September, in a legal case brought by the European Commission - with both sides claiming victory.

AstraZeneca is now expected to supply 15 million doses by 26 July, 20 million doses by 23 August, and 15 million doses by 27 September.

Responding to the ruling, the company said it would "substantially exceed" these deliveries by the end of June

Read more at: https://euobserver.com/coronavirus/152192

EU mulls legal action against AstraZeneca over shortfalls - by Elena Sánchez Nicolás

The European Commission said on Thursday (22 April) it has not yet decided whether to take legal action against AstraZeneca for failing to meet its contractual obligations - but repeated that all options are still on the table.

"What matters is that we ensure the delivery of a sufficient number of doses, in line with the company's earlier commitments," a commission spokesperson said.

Read moreat: EU mulls legal action against AstraZeneca over shortfalls

AstraZeneca Covid Vaccination Age Limitation: Germany recommends AstraZeneca COVID vaccine only for people under 65

Germany will review the order of its coronavirus vaccine priority list following a recommendation from its vaccine authority not to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to individuals 65 and older.

"We will now have to review the order of vaccination [because] of the age limitations of the AstraZeneca vaccine," said health minister Jens Spahn, according to AFP.

Read more at: Germany recommends AstraZeneca COVID vaccine only for people under 65 | Euronews

EU approves AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine

COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is now authorised across the EU. This follows the granting of a conditional marketing authorisation by the European Commission on 29 January 2021.

EMA has recommended granting a conditional marketing authorisation for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in people from 18 years of age. This is the third COVID-19 vaccine that EMA has recommended for authorisation.

EMA’s human medicines committee (CHMP) has thoroughly assessed the data on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine and recommended by consensus a formal conditional marketing authorisation be granted by the European Commission. This will assure EU citizens that the vaccine meets EU standards and puts in place the safeguards, controls and obligations to underpin EU-wide vaccination campaigns.

Read more at: EU approves AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine | News | DW | 29.01.2021

Pharmaceutical Industry: Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes - by Alan Pyke

Pfizer plan to skip out on American tax obligations - KAPUT

The largest-ever corporate merger to skip out on American tax obligations is now kaput.

Drug giant Pfizer is giving up on its corporate marriage to Ireland-based Allergan after an Obama administration policy change designed to prevent U.S. companies from fleeing taxes by moving their mailing address abroad. The $160 billion merger cemented last fall would have produced significant tax savings for Pfizer, at the expense of the American public.

The sudden collapse of the deal comes as news organizations the world over comb through the huge Panama Papers leak that exposes how individuals take similar advantage of the cracks in international tax law to conceal their personal holdings and business dealings with offshore shell companies. The leaks are bringing a burst of fresh attention to a long-standing problem: It’s very easy, and often legal, to slip out of the taxman’s grasp by way of clever accounting.
\
Founded in Brooklyn in 1849, Pfizer is one of the longest-running corporate success stories in the American economy. It has benefited from U.S. taxpayers’ investments in roads, education, scientific research, and global stability for almost 160 years, growing from $2,500 in seed money from Charles Pfizer’s father into the top-selling drugmaker in the world.

But for the past several years, Pfizer’s executives have tried desperately to move away. The company sought what’s called an inversion merger, in which two corporations combine and use accounting schemes to shift almost all of their profits into a country with low tax rates.

Pfizer tried to buy British drug titan AstraZeneca in 2014, hoping to slice a billion dollars per year off its U.S. tax bill. But it wouldn’t meet AstraZeneca’s asking price, and the would-be inversion fell apart.

But the Pfizer-Allergan announcement came after inversions had become a hot topic in the political press rather than just the financial pages. A series of high-profile corporate expatriations to duck American taxes had prompted a populist backlash, and the White House had begun explicitly shaming inverters as unpatriotic.

To put force to those words, the Obama administration began taking a series of independent steps to discourage inversions. The highly technical steps chipped away at the financial incentives that lead companies to invert in the first place.

The most recent of those came this week, leading Pfizer to abandon its latest inversion. The government didn’t act to block the merger, but rather to negate the tax benefits that were Pfizer’s primary reason for trying to shift its official headquarters abroad while continuing to operate in the United States.

One change blocks a corporate practice called “earnings stripping,” whereby inverted companies shift their corporate debts into the American tax jurisdiction at the same time that they shift their profits out of the country. Because interest payments on such debts are tax-deductible, earnings stripping effectively doubles down on the tax-avoidance at the core of inversion mergers.

And for “serial inverters” that have repeatedly used these mergers to minimize their American tax obligations, Treasury officials announced this week, some key tax and accounting questions will now work a little differently. Allergan itself is the product of multiple inversion mergers between U.S. and international drugmakers down the years.

The new rules meant that if Pfizer went ahead with the deal, Allergan would be considered by Treasury to hold a much smaller share of the total ownership of the merged firm. So small, in fact, that the merged firm would still count as U.S.-based for tax purposes.

If Pfizer believed that combining with Allergan were in its best interests in fundamental business terms — production, research and development, all the work of actually creating, manufacturing, and selling medicine — then it would have gone ahead with the deal.

But instead, after learning the merger wouldn’t shave its tax bill down, Pfizer decided to walk away — even though doing so means paying Allergan a $150 million “break-up fee.”

Read more: Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes | ThinkProgress

Pharmaceutical Industry: .Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca

US drugmaker Pfizer said Monday it is calling off its controversial bid to acquire British rival AstraZeneca. The announcement came after a 69.4 billion-pound ($116.8 billion) offer rejected by AstraZeneca last week.
“Following the AstraZeneca board's rejection of the proposal,

Pfizer announces that it does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer CEO Ian Read said his company's last offer represented what he believed to be the full value of the company.

Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said he was pleased with the retreat.
“We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company,” Johansson said.

rEAD MORE; Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca | Business | DW.DE | 26.05.2014