China Direct

Pfizer delivers oncology solutions in rural China

 

 

CBI member, Pfizer has announced that it plans to accelerate the launch of new oncology drugs in China and expand drug coverage in rural areas.

Pfizer currently markets five cancer treatments in China – breast cancer drug, Ibrance; lung cancer drugs, Vizimpro and Xalkori; and kidney cancer therapies, Sutent and Inlyta – but will continue to unveil more novel cancer treatments in China, such as lung cancer treatment Lorbrena; which was approved in the US in 2018.

Chris Ariyan, emerging markets group lead for oncology at Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group said: “[Pfizer] have been putting a lot of focus on China since the country started making more efforts to enhance its healthcare.”

Pfizer is taking advantage of changes to the regulatory environment within the pharmaceuticals sector that now allow foreign drugs manufacturers to draw on evidence obtained from testing outside of China, if the state regulator deems there to be a critical need for a specific treatment. According to Ariyan, all of Pfizer’s five cancer treatments available in China were launched in the market following ‘priority’ reviews. He estimates that this shortened the time it took Pfizer to deliver the drugs to market in China by as much as two years.

Despite the accelerated approval, however, China is only the 87^th country to sell Pfizer’s new breast cancer treatment, Ibrance.

However, in addition to increasing the number of cancer treatments Pfizer offers in the China market, the company also aims to improve the brand’s market penetration, particularly into rural areas.

“Access to healthcare is not just about getting drugs into the country, it’s also about being able to manage a therapy in the right way. The biggest challenge to improving rural patient access is a lack of healthcare expertise in these regions. Dealing with the side effects of cancer therapies, for instance, can be challenging in these areas.”

To that end, Pfizer is developing an online educational platform that will inform physicians in rural China about new treatments, offer assistance on monitoring therapies and help them reach out to other experts on specific cases. Pfizer already has two similar platforms for cardiovascular and anti-infective treatments in China.

 

BMW and Great Wall Auto begin work on China plant

 

 

CBI member BMW has announced that it has broken ground on a new factory in China that will produce battery-powered Mini cars. The factory will be managed in partnership with Chinese domestic automobile manufacturer, Great Wall and the collaboration will be named Spotlight Automotive.

Klaus Fröhlich, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for Development, said at the official ceremony to mark the inauguration of Spotlight Automotive: “Today we are taking the next step in our collaboration. With the BMW Group as a pioneer in the field of electromobility and Great Wall as a major player and expert in industrialisation in the Chinese market, we are joining forces for development and production of the future electric MINI and new Great Wall models.”

BMW Chief Financial Officer, Nicolas Peter said that the partnership with Great Wall will help BMW to bring down the costs for electrification, especially for smaller cars; which was the automobile industry’s number one challenge.

Executives from BMW and Great Wall were present on Friday for the casting ceremony, held in an empty field on the outskirts of the city of Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu province. The €650m factory will be completed by 2022 and have the capacity to manufacture 160,000 petrol and electric vehicles annually, a portion of which will be exported. BMW will only manufacture electric Minis at the plant.

 

 

Next Generation Drives Establishment of Family Offices in Asia

CBI member Jersey Finance has just announced the tenth anniversary of its Hong Kong office and to mark the occasion has released its latest research into the rise of family offices across Asia.

Please access the Report here and congratulations to Jersey Finance on ten years serving clients and doing business in Hong Kong.

Kindly refer to the Press Release below for more information.

Download Jersey Finance_whitepaper_press release_HK version

Airbus continues to invest & expand in China

 

CBI member, Airbus has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China’s state-owned, China Aviation Industry Corporation to expand and increase investment in China over the next decade.

The MoU was signed on Wednesday at the China International Import Expo., and sets out how Airbus will shift its manufacturing of the A330 widebody aircraft in Tianjin to focus on the A350 aircraft, with the first A350 expected to roll off the production line in Tianjin in 2021.

Besides the Tianjin A350 final assembly line, assembly lines of Airbus aircraft in Europe will also increase production, to six aircraft per month for the China market by the end of the year, a 50% increase compared to the text of Airbus’s original MoU.

Guillaume Faury said: “[Airbus] have developed strongly and positively in China. Airbus is one of the most deeply involved original equipment manufacturers that are in cooperation with China, and we will continue to invest.”

Airbus now takes about 50% of market share in China, compared with just 9% in 1996. In addition to manufacturing aircraft, Airbus also manages an Airbus Engineering Centre in Beijing and a Shenzhen-based China Innovation Centre, pioneering research into intelligent air-borne solutions to city navigation.

 

AstraZeneca launches $1 billion China healthcare investment fund

 

CBI member, AstraZeneca has announced that it is launching a new fund with China International Capital Corporation to invest $1 billion in China’s healthcare sector, predominantly to fund research and development.

According to AstraZeneca CEO, Pascal Soriot, the fund will look to invest in Chinese firms, with companies involved in a life-sciences park AstraZeneca helped to open in the city of Wuxi last year, to be among the first to be brought into partnership. AstraZeneca will be a minority partner in the fund, and will mainly play an advisory role in selecting investments and supporting firms.

Mr. Soriot said: “[AstraZeneca] can help by choosing some of those investments [and] we can also help along the way with start-up companies, developing products and helping them find their way around the world. […] it is a substantial investment on our side, but also for our financial partners.”

The company reportedly also plans to expand an existing research and development centre in Shanghai from 450 employees to 1,000 and to establish a new artificial intelligence innovation centre in the city.

AstraZeneca is performing particularly well in China, where sales have doubled since 2012 and foreign drugs manufacturers have witnessed a softening regulatory environment for pharmaceutical firms.

Mr. Soriot said that AstraZeneca wanted to start making drugs it could export globally from China, with areas of opportunity having been identified in oncology and respiratory diseases. “Historically, until today, [AstraZeneca’s] Chinese team has been developing global products for the Chinese market. We now want the Chinese team to take the global leadership on some projects,” he said.

Arup's Beijing ‘Zun’ building reaches for the sky

 

CBI member, Arup has published its latest edition of the Arup Journal. This quarter’s edition includes a feature on the firm’s work on Beijing’s Zun skyscraper, now the city’s tallest building (overtaking another Arup-designed construction, the 330m China World Trade Tower).

The article explores in detail how Arup tackled building a 528m skyscraper in an area with pronounced seismic activity. Arup was the lead structural engineer on China Zun, working with architectural practice Kohn Pedersen Fox.

The building’s intriguing profile – wide at the top and at the base and slender in the middle – is inspired by the zun, an ancient Chinese ritual vessel for drinking wine, which also lends the structure its nickname. Formally, the building is known as the CITIC Tower, after its developer and end user, CITIC Group.

The novel shape means that, of the 350,000m2 of premium office space that it adds to the city’s central business district, an unusually high proportion is in the top one-third of the building. This both provides the client with an abundance of high-level office space with spectacular views across the Chinese capital and makes the most of the building’s narrow site of just 11,000m2.

The unusual shape had implications for the engineering team: Beijing is located in a major seismic zone, although the building is not near any tectonic fault line. Beyond designing for its hourglass figure, the risk of an earthquake added complexity to the engineering design, which needed to keep the building stable during a significant seismic event.

To ensure that the design could be delivered safely, efficiently and cost effectively, Arup engineered a highly efficient tube-in-tube structural support system composed of a perimeter steel megastructure and a reinforced concrete core. The firm also employed advanced digital technology to rapidly assess more than 800 different options for the design in a short space of time.

To read more about how Arup handled this major design challenge, please follow the link.

Thales on track with Shanghai Metro Comms contract

 

CBI member, Thales has announced that Shanghai’s Metro Line 5, which incorporates Thales signalling and train communications equipment, has gone into full line service.

Thales was brought on to the project to provide its state-of-the-art dual Communication Based Train Control architecture for the re-signalling of the existing Line 5 route, which was the first metro line in China to undergo renovation and construction while maintaining operations. Thales’ CBTC was deployed to enhance the reliability and stability of communication along the track while the work was carried out.

Thales, along with its Chinese joint venture partner TST, was responsible for the re-signalling of the existing line and providing the new signalling for the extension in the meanwhile. To ensure no interruption to normal service, all the re-signalling and commission was conducted in only a few hours during the interval of normal operation during the night. Both before and after the commissioning, a switchover was made between the old and new signalling system to ensure normal operation the next day. After over 500 days of working against the clock, and more than 1,000 switchovers, Shanghai Line 5 had a seamless cutover to the new signalling system with no disruption to normal service.

Jerome Bendell, vice-president, North Asia and CEO of Thales China said: “By re-signalling a busy metro line in Shanghai and equipping the new signalling systems on its extension at the same time, Thales has once again proven its outstanding capabilities to deliver the complex projects in urban rail modernisation through its JV. It demonstrates the great success of our strategy on localising R&D through the JV. [Thales] is committed to supporting the future of Chinese cities with their Fast Forward plan and contributing to their increased public transit capacity.”

 

Jaguar Land Rover drives China Sales boost

 

 

CBI member, Jaguar Land Rover has announced that strong sales in China have helped the car manufacturer record a pre-tax profit of £156 million in the three months to 30 September, with revenues up 8% to £6.1 billion.

According to Jaguar Land Rover, sales in China were up by nearly a quarter from this time last year.

This is apparently because of the popularity of new models, such as the Range Rover Evoque, which saw a 50% increase in sales. Jaguar Land Rover chief executive, Sir Ralph Speth said that it was “encouraging to see the pact of [JLR’s] Project Charge transformation and our improvement initiatives in the China market start to come through in our results.”

UBS first foreign bank to sponsor China Star tech bourse IPO

 

 

CBI member, UBS has announced that it has become the first foreign bank to sponsor an initial public offering (IPO) on China’s new tech-focussed Star Market trading bourse, where underwriters are required to invest in the listings they bring to the market.

The Star Market was launched in Shanghai in July, and is modelled on New York’s Nasdaq Index. The intention behind the bourse is to provide domestic technology innovators with a platform through which they can attract investment, ensuring they have resources to develop and compete globally. The bourse utilises a registration-based IPO system to facilitate companies’ funding, whereby if a company wishes to list a subsidiary or invested part of its business on the Star Market, the parent company must also become an investor in the listing.

UBS Securities, the bank’s majority-controlled joint venture in China acted as the sole underwriter for the IPO of Haohai Biological, a Chinese bio-chemical R&D company. Swiss-based, UBS AG subsequently become an investor in Haohai Biological, as required by Star Market listing rules. The company was previously listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but has subsequently become the first company to be dual listed in Hong Kong and on the Star Market. Upon listing, the company was oversubscribed by more than 2,400 times, reflecting strong initial demand for securities listed on the market.

The launch of the Star Market was praised by analysts as a step towards embracing market forces in China’s economy, since companies that list an IPO on the bourse are priced by the market.

UBS said that this feature means that the Star Market opens up new revenue channels for its securities operations in China.

David Chin, head of UBS investment banking, Asia-Pacific said: “[The Star Market] is one of a series of capital market innovations rolled out in China this year which, collectively, present new business opportunities for us.”

UBS is one of only a small number of foreign banks permitted to sponsor IPOs in China. Historically, investment banking fees on IPOs issued on China’s stock exchange boards had been far smaller than in other markets, such as Hong Kong. However, Star Market deals are reportedly paying out more than IPOs on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s main board. Banks reportedly took in $103m in revenue from $2.3bn in Star Market IPOs in October, while the Shanghai exchange listing made just $32m in revenues for investment banks on $2.2bn in IPOs during the same period.

Mitsubishi Corporation secures $7 billion SinoSteel deal

 

 

CBI member, Mitsubishi Corporation has announced that it has entered into an agreement with China’s state-owned, SinoSteel to divest its interests in an iron ore mine and rail and port infrastructure project in Western Australia, in a deal reportedly valued at $7 billion dollars.

Mitsubishi acquired an original 50% stake in the project in 2007 for $100 million, and bought the project outright in 2012 for an additional $225 million. The project revolved around the refurbishment of the Jack Hills iron ore mine, as well as a proposed rail and port facility for the export of iron ore. Before acquiring the site, SinoSteel had been set to be a major customer of the port and rail facility for the export of iron ore to China.

Mitsubishi said in a statement that the Japanese group agreed to exit the project considering its own divestment strategy, which sees the company transition to place a higher emphasis on ‘green investments.’

Shares were reportedly transferred between Mitsubishi Corporation and SinoSteel on Friday. At that time, the Jack Hills iron ore mine project, named Crossland Resources, had capital of $375 million. Mitsubishi revealed that development had been expensive while withholding the sum, but disclosed that it was satisfied with the agreement it had drawn up with its Chinese partner.