United Kingdom

Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences 

Pharmaceutical and life science companies are transforming their business models to maintain profit and reduce costs against a backdrop of depleting pipelines, generic competition and pricing pressures.

 

Associated activities such as outsourcing, joint ventures, licensing agreements, M&A, workforce cutbacks and entering 'pharmerging' markets carry extensive risks, especially in a highly regulated environment.

 

Our industry track record means we can help your organisation to address these risks decisively and proactively.

What's on your Mind?

  • Seeking to prevent, detect and respond to regulatory compliance issues, especially related to anti-bribery and corruption and industry codes of practice.
  • Looking to manage the threat of fraud and misconduct within a global organisation with a complex value chain.
  • Needing to review contract compliance of suppliers and other third parties (e.g. CROs) and out-licensing partners to achieve full value and prevent corrupt acts.
  • Facing legal action requiring quantification of loss, e.g. product liability or IP disputes.
  • Managing the response to information requests from regulators or as part of electronic disclosure e.g. in a product liability case.

 

Bringing you Peace of Mind

 

Our dedicated sector specialists can help you in the following areas:

  • Anti-bribery and corruption- help avoid non-compliant sales and marketing activity, as well as preventing and responding to potentially corrupt acts.
  • Fraud- help  prevent, detect and respond to the risk or occurrence of fraud and misconduct, reducing the damage it causes.
  • Intellectual property and contract governance- independently review the performance of third parties, indicating non-compliance with contracts along with areas of risk and concern.
  • Dispute Advice- help you bring commercial disputes to a resolution with a favourable outcome.
  • Technology- use advanced technology to help recover and analyse information.
  • Corporate Intelligence- help find critical information on individuals and organisations, to give you a full picture for your business decisions.

 

What's in it for you?

  • Achieve compliance with relevant bribery and corruption legislation, avoiding severe penalties significant reputational and commercial harm.
  • Potential financial benefits out of contract compliance reviews - we have identified monetary gains in 70 percent of the 1,000+ contracts reviewed in the last five years.
  • Protect assets and reputation by being able to spot and take action against fraud and misconduct.
  • Able to make informed business decisions, reducing risk and improving results arising from the decision.
  • Reduced risk, saved time and money, and greater business insight using sophisticated technology tools.
  • Commercial disputes and disagreements resolved with a favourable outcome and financial ruling.

 

Why KPMG

  • Potential financial benefits out of contract compliance reviews - we have identified monetary gains in 70 percent of the 1,000+ contracts reviewed in the last five years.
  • We have a dedicated team combining in-depth forensic knowledge with practical sector experience.
  • We have successfully carried out some of the largest and most complex global financial investigations to date.

 

Case Study

 

  • Sales & Marketing Compliance -  Non-Compliance in an Asian Market.
  • Issue: Our client, a pharmaceutical company, faced allegations of widespread violations of promotion and marketing codes in one of its key Asian markets. These were based on anecdotal evidence and concerned relationships between Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Management and the investigation needed to review up to 25,000 transactions.
  • Approach: Data mining techniques were used to filter down the transactions using screening criteria to focus the search on the transactions likely to be of the greatest interest. These were investigated in more detail by the Forensic team by interviewing key client staff and looking for corroborative evidence.
  • Benefit for the Client: Weak internal controls and poor enforcement of sanctions for non-compliance meant that there were potential code breaches. These were especially evident in the interactions with KOLs and concerned evidence relating to agreed payment, the documentation of receipts and promotional activity.

Related insights

Overseas Bribery and Corruption Survey 2009

We have recently published a survey on overseas bribery and corruption which explores industry awareness of the major US and UK extra-territorial legislation in this area, and what businesses are doing to ensure compliance.

Astrus

Global transactions and regulatory scrutiny are compelling companies to examine their business relationships in order to assess risk and comply with regulatory mandates.

 

Talk to us

Talk to us

Hitesh Patel

 

Partner
KPMG LLP (UK)

020 7311 3571 | hitesh.patel3@kpmg.co.uk