Hikma gets unwanted attention for US price hikes

REGIONAL– Not the type of attention you want in the international press: Hikma is indeed London-listed, but the Jordan-based maker of meds is one of the quietest global success stories to have emerged from our corner of the world. Now, the company is under fire after a Financial Times investigation found that it had “sharply increased the price of a string of medicines in the US — including a … treatment that has risen 430 per cent — in the latest instance of ‘gouging’.” Reuters has picked up the FT’s piece, making sure it goes global. Couple this with the newspaper’s earlier commentary on below-expectation results in 1H2017 and it’s simple enough to paint this as a case of corporate avarice.