Novartis to spend $1b on Shanghai R&D center

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis will spend US$1 billion to turn China into one of its three major global hubs for research and development, the Wall Street Journal reported. Daniel Vasella, the company’s CEO, said China revenue has been growing at 30% a year for several years now. Based on this progress, the country is on course to become one of Novartis’s three largest markets by 2014. Vasella added that the nationwide rollout of health-care coverage would be a key driver of the company’s growth. Novartis will expand the workforce at its Shanghai R&D center to 1,000 employees, up from 160 now. The Shanghai facility will then have a similar number of employees to Novartis’s second-largest research hub, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. China’s low cost base, skilled workforce and long-term commercial appeal has seen it become increasingly popular as a research base among big pharmaceutical companies.