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Pfizer’s abandoned deal leaves all sides tainted. The U.S. Treasury looks bad for changing the rules on Monday to kill the $160 billion merger with Allergan. Lawmakers’ inaction encouraged such tax-driven transactions. But Pfizer and Chief Executive Ian Read bear the most responsibility for wasting time and resources pushing an overpriced, risky deal...Monday’s new standards directly target Pfizer’s deal, as they disregard U.S. assets acquired in the past three years. That eliminates Allergan and its low Irish tax rate as a target. It’s unclear if the Treasury Department has overstepped its authority. But purposefully and rapidly mutating laws, especially when applied retroactively, are bad for business and legal authority...Lawmakers emerge covered in tar, too. They could have stopped inversions cold by adopting a territorial tax system. This would have stopped U.S. companies having to pay an extra levy to Uncle Sam on cash earned overseas if local taxes are lower than the U.S. statutory rate. Their fecklessness encouraged Pfizer and other firms to pursue complicated deals where the main payoff is tax avoidance...

Drug manufacturers have mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign against the county proposal, which would require pharmaceutical companies to finance a disposal program for unused medications and syringes...Proponents say the program would reduce chemicals ending up in the water supply, and would help curb prescription drug abuse by making sure that unused drugs are safely disposed of rather than stockpiled in medicine cabinets...The opponents say it would be costly and have little effect on the problem. They argue that the better solution would be to educate consumers about how to properly dispose of their unused medications...The county has about 20 collection sites run by the Sheriff's Department, and some pharmacies have voluntary take-back programs...But officials said there aren't enough available sites for the county's 10 million residents. They want the pharmaceutical industry to finance the creation of a larger network...pharmaceutical industry groups spent nearly $250,000 lobbying the county...Supervisors' offices received dozens of letters and phone calls from consumers worried that the measure would push up the cost of their medication...Consumer Healthcare Products Assn. said in a statement that the county proposal would create "an expensive, inefficient, unworkable and ineffective program that would garner low levels of participation and do little to accomplish the goals the county is seeking to resolve."

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc's directors and key officers have received a cease-trade order by the securities regulator in the Canadian province of Quebec, on the company's request, Valeant said...In a separate statement, the Autorité Des Marches Financiers said the order against trading shares takes effect Thursday and is in place for 15 days...The delay in Valeant filing its annual report poses a risk of debt default, Valeant said March 15, generating new scrutiny of the much-criticized company. Defaulting on debt could prompt lenders to demand faster repayment and place restrictions on Valeant's ability to borrow...The cease-trade order technically applies only to Quebec, but the practical effect of such orders in Canada, which does not have a national securities regulator, is to stop trading across the country...Valeant is not under active investigation by AMF, but has been under "verification"...

Lawyers have given health minister Alistair Burt a deadline of 4pm on 18 March 2016 to respond to claims that the consultation on proposed cuts to the pharmacy budget in England is illegal and should be abandoned...If the government does not accept that the consultation is illegal then lawyers will consider going to the High Court to seek a judicial review of the consultation process and the content of the consultation document...The prospect of legal action comes three months after the Department of Health first outlined its proposals for the community pharmacy sector in England in a letter to the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee. The letter...set out plans to cut the community pharmacy contractual framework by 6.1% in 2016. As well as the funding cuts, the proposals include a range of measures to make efficiency savings in the sector while extending clinical roles for the profession...Healthwatch England told the government that there is a "clear appetite" for community pharmacy to play a greater role in health prevention, the treatment of minor ailments and supporting people with long-term conditions. It says consumers value pharmacy’s accessibility and some believe co-locating pharmacies to GP surgeries makes sense...However, the organisation gives a cautious welcome to the idea of ‘hub-and-spoke’ dispensing and says that where medicines are assembled centrally, patients will still need local access to expert pharmacy advice.

Pfizer Inc and Allergan Plc walked away from their $160 billion merger on Wednesday, a major win for President Barack Obama, who has been pushing to curb deals in which companies move overseas to cut taxes...Pfizer said the decision was driven by new U.S. Treasury rules aimed at such deals, called inversions. The merger would have allowed New York-based Pfizer to cut its tax bill by an estimated $1 billion annually by domiciling in Ireland, where tax rates are lower…Allergan Chief Executive Brent Saunders said...that the new Treasury rule would not stop the company from doing other stock-based acquisitions as soon as this fall...It really looked like they did a very fine job at constructing a temporary rule to stop this deal and obviously it was successful…

Maria Sharapova has never met Ivars Kalvins, and it’s likely that she’s never even heard of the Latvian scientist, but the he has an offer for her…As pretty much the whole world knows by now, Sharapova announced last month that she had failed a drug test because she was found to have taken meldonium, which WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, banned...What isn’t as well known is that Kalvins invented meldonium, a heart drug…This is like insurance...explaining that the drug ensures that the heart gets enough oxygen, even when pushed to the limits of its capacity, as in elite-level sports...Athletes have to work very, very close to this border of the physical capacity of the human body...If they cross this border, there is no way back. Their hearts are damaged, their muscles are damaged, etc...He predicted that the WADA ban could lead to sudden deaths of athletes whose hearts aren’t able to get enough oxygen, resulting in permanent tissue damage...some scientists say that meldonium increases athletes’ endurance besides improving their recovery after exercise and protecting their hearts from stress…His (Kalvins) and WADA’s conflict over whether meldonium boosts athletic performance seems to rest on their different interpretations of "improves physical capacity." Kalvins says the drug doesn’t enable athletes to push themselves further, but it helps their hearts recover when they do so. WADA, on the other hand...determined that meldonium was being used by athletes with the intent of enhancing performance...

Pfizer Inc and Allergan Plc said they have received a request for additional information from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission with respect to their merger...The FTC's request for information extends the waiting period required under antitrust rules to 30 days, after the companies have provided the information...The companies said the request was anticipated as part of the regulatory process and they were working with the FTC in connection with the review.

Most experts in corporate taxes thought there was little President Barack Obama could do to force Pfizer, the largest drug company in the U.S., from moving its corporate address to Dublin, Ireland, in order to escape paying American taxes...Yesterday evening, Jack Lew, Obama’s secretary of the treasury, called Pfizer’s bluff, instituting new rules to make the move as difficult as possible. The punch hit, and investors are reeling...Now the move could intensify an election-year battle over what it means for companies to be American, and the fairness of the U.S. corporate tax code...Lew is peeling the Allergan onion. Until last year, the company called Allergan...was based–and paid taxes–in Irvine, Calif. Then it was bought by Actavis , a Dublin, Ireland-based drug maker...But wait! Actavis itself was built by a rapid succession of deals, starting when Watson Pharmaceuticals...bought Actavis...partly in order to move its tax domicile to Dublin, Ireland. Now, for the purposes of laws related to the Pfizer deal, the Treasury says many of those other deals don’t count...the Treasury’s new rules reek of overreach. Really? We’re going to redefine what counts as a share of a company as a regulatory action, so that we can make the law mean what we want it to?...Pfizer is going to have to be just as clever as the Treasury is here, and then some...expect a fight: Pfizer versus the Obama administration.

After a decade in which drug makers regularly paid huge fines for various fraudulent practices, there was a noticeable drop over the past two years, according to a new analysis by Public Citizen...Pharmaceutical companies paid approximately $2.8 billion to settle federal and state civil and criminal charges in 2014 and 2015, compared with $9.9 billion during 2012 and 2013. The most recent payments also amounted to the lowest two-year total since 2004 and 2005...Among the worst offenders in recent years were Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Novartis, and GlaxoSmithKline, although the report noted that nearly every large drug maker has paid fines to resolve some kind of infraction over the past two decades...A spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America...We are disappointed at the report’s misleading conclusions...Among its many methodological flaws, the report aggregates all settlements involving the pharmaceutical industry, with little regard as to whether the companies actually broke the law. Civil settlements rarely resolve the question of guilt. Yet the report glosses over its own finding that 88 percent of the settlements reported were civil, not criminal...

The Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have launched a consultation on changes to the Human Medicines Regulations and the Medicines Act...The consultation seeks views on the following proposed changes:

• allowing independent pharmacies to make use of ‘hub and spoke’ dispensing models – a ‘hub’ pharmacy dispenses medicines on a large scale, often by making use of automation, preparing and assembling the medicines for regular ‘spoke’ pharmacies that supply the medicines to the patient;
• allowing the price of medicines and a statement on how the costs of medicines are met to be published on dispensing labels should this be required for NHS medicines dispensed as part of NHS pharmaceutical services;
• clarifying the current dispensing label requirements for monitored dosage systems and medicines supplied under patient group directions; and
• amending the pharmacists’ exemption in section 10 of the Medicines Act, regarding the preparation and assembly of medicines, following a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union.