Reuters first with market-moving news of Glaxo patent defeat
05.20.2010
Reuters was well ahead of the competition on May 20 with market-moving news that the German patent on GlaxoSmithKline`s top-selling lung drug Advair had been revoked. The Reuters story was particularly important to investors because the drugmaker chose not to disclose the defeat in an official stock exchange announcement. Reuters was 6 minutes in front of Bloomberg with the news. Glaxo shares, which had been up 0.9 percent, fell as much as 1.7 percent, while shares in Vectura, a British drugmaker working on a generic version of Advair, gained more than 6 percent. The patent loss triggered research notes from brokers including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Piper Jaffray.
