AstraZeneca offloads anaesthetic rights to Aspen

AstraZeneca announced on Thursday morning that it has completed its commercialisation agreement with Aspen Global Incorporated, for rights to its global anaesthetics portfolio outside the US.

The FTSE 100 pharmaceutical firm said the agreement covers seven established medicines - Diprivan, EMLA, Xylocaine, Marcaine, Naropin, Carbocaine and Citanest.

“As AstraZeneca will retain a significant ongoing interest in the portfolio, the upfront payment - to be recognised in the third quarter of 2016 - along with all future milestone and royalty payments, will be reported as externalisation revenue in the company’s financial statements,” AstraZeneva’s board said in a statement.

The externalisation came after AstraZeneca was found paying Chinese medical experts large ‘speaking fees’ to share their knowledge at events which never took place.

Federal regulators at the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined AstraZeneca $5.5m to settle a bribery investigation into improper payments made to healthcare officials in state employ, in China and Russia from 2005 to 2010.