Reuters first with Bristol Myers blood pressure drug recall

Reuters scooped competitors with an exclusive story on Bristol Myers recalling 64 million tablets of its nearly billion-dollar blood pressure drug Avalide, the medicine’s second such recall in about four months. The news hits at a particularly vulnerable time for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which has been beset by a wave of manufacturing problems hitting companies from Johnson & Johnson to Genzyme. Bristol shares underperformed the market at the next trading session after the Reuters story was published. The story was cited by influential industry blogs including FiercePharma and followed a day later by the Associated Press and Dow Jones.