Star fund manager Woodford calls for break-up of GlaxoSmithKline

In an interview with the Radio 5 Live, Woodford said the FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals group needs radical restructuring and should be divided into separate companies rather than run as a single £65bn giant.

Woodford said Glaxo is so complicated it is "like four FTSE 100 companies bolted together".

In addition, he said the company does not "do a particularly good job of managing all of the constituent parts".

"We'd like the business to recognise that it should focus on certain activities in the portfolio and do them better than they have done in the past, demerge the bits they haven't managed particularly well and let other people who specialise in those activities run those businesses," Woodford said.

He went on to say that the sum of the parts is worth more than the current share price.

At 1102 GMT, Glaxo shares were up 1.4% to 1,362p.