Emma Walmsley still has time to build belief in product pipeline – but clinging onto consumer division hardly shouts confidence
“I am a change agent,” declared Emma Walmsley, as she unveiled the biggest overhaul of GlaxoSmithKline in the 20-odd years of the company’s life in its current form. The consumer healthcare division will depart via a plain-vanilla demerger next year; shareholders will have to live with a sharply reduced dividend; and “new GSK” will seek salvation for its rotten share price by investing more heavily in its core business of pharmaceuticals and vaccines.
That’s the outline of the changes, but the edges went a little blurry on close inspection. Why will GSK retain up to 20% of its two-thirds stake in a consumer business as a “short-term financial investment”? Possibly because it wants to cling to the comfort blanket of the consumer division’s reliable cashflows a little longer.
