Pfizer leaves UK in the dark

The move would follow in the footsteps of US pharma peers: Perrigo bought Ireland’s Elan for $8.6bn; Actavis paid $5bn to buy Warner Chilcott; and Mallinckrodt acquired Questcor for $6.5bn. Those so-called “inversions” are allowed through a loophole that lets them move tax base, provided fewer than 80pc of shareholders are based in the US.

Before formally announcing its approach on Monday, Pfizer had already briefed the UK government, but not its US counterpart - a decision it could rue. Governments do not like to be caught unawares; Washington could seek to lower the 80pc threshold, though probably not in time to scupper a deal.

So, the UK Treasury could be in line for a tax windfall. Against that must be weighed the inevitable job cuts and slimming of R&D.

As US giant Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury showed, there is little that the UK can do to block takeovers of homegrown companies. Shareholders are the owners of UK companies, not the Government, and they will decide whether to support a deal.

And, for shareholders, the future of AstraZeneca rests on price. It is inevitable that Pfizer will have to sweeten its price, it simply remains a question of by how much. But this is just the start of a dance that is likely to reshape the UK’s pharmaceutical industry.

Gould must now unveil hidden value in BG

So much for “personal reasons”. Maybe BG Group thought it was doing Chris Finlayson a favour by setting the hares running on Monday as it ushered him out of the door with a year’s money - or £1.27m.

Was the now ex-chief executive ill? Embroiled in a family crisis? Up to his neck in a scandal? None of those, as it turned out. He just wasn’t up to the job.

That, at least, was the conclusion of the board, led by now executive chairman Andrew Gould – and the shareholders who’ve been phoning him up lately. They’ve been watching Mr Finlayson in action for 16 months and, three profits warnings later, have cried foul.

They’ve probably made the right decision, too – even if Mr Finlayson might not see it that way, preferring instead to spot the parallels with Manchester United’s David Moyes. The ousted BG boss had a hard act to follow in Sir Frank Chapman, who more than quadrupled the share price but whose legacy was slightly tarnished in his final days by the type of warning on production levels that have dogged his succesor’s short reign.

Ungovernable Egypt remains a disaster zone, with BG forced to declare “force majeure” on its liquefied natural gas contracts in January. But you can hardly blame Mr Finlayson for getting caught in the political crossfire there. What’s done for him is his failure, or reluctance, to demonstrate there’s much more value in the BG portfolio than acknowledged by the market. Analysts reckon BG has net assets of around £18 a share. But shares languish at less than £11.50.

Mr Gould wants a chief executive who quickly gives the board “optionality” – worked-up plans on how to get value out of assets, including mega-projects yet to come onstream in Australia and Brazil. This could include selling down stakes, joint-ventures to spread risk or divesting assets altogether.

Whatever, now Mr Finlayson’s off, Mr Gould has little option but to get on with it himself – at the risk of deterring wannabe chief executives, who generally like to have a say in the strategy themselves when taking the helm of a near-£40bn company.

Alstom is proof French can’t do business

The irony of the French government’s bid to make Siemens the winner of the battle for Alstom, keeping it out of American hands, is that a decade ago a previous government pulled out all the stops to block the German group from taking over its energy assets.

In 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy, then finance minister, proudly claimed to have “rescued” the almost bankrupt Alstom for the nation with a €4.4bn (£3.6bn) bailout; the socialist president, François Hollande, would be left red-faced if a French industrial crown jewel “saved” by his arch-rival falls under US control.

The battle over Alstom, the maker of the iconic TGV train, is the latest example of France’s economic nationalism, personified by economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, telling Indian industrial tycoon Lakshmi Mittal he was “not welcome in France” after he tried to close a plant in 2012.

France wants to turn Alstom into a train-building “Airbus” but it no longer has shares in the company and this time Montebourg can only cajole and threaten.

As Michel Barnier, the EU’s internal market chief, pointedly said yesterday: “We are in the private sector here, we’re no longer in the domain of the administered economy.”

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