UCB SA

President Donald Trump has secured new drug pricing agreements with nine pharmaceutical companies, bringing the total to 26 and covering 90% of the domestic pharmaceutical market. The companies include Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and UCB, which will offer discounts on outpatient drugs across all state Medicaid programs. These deals, announced Monday, aim to align U.S. drug prices with international levels and cover treatments for chronic and rare conditions such as hemophilia, liver disease, skin disorders, and certain cancers. The companies have also committed to investing at least $19.6 billion in U.S. manufacturing, with Astellas, Sun Pharma, Teva, and UCB donating active pharmaceutical ingredients to the federal strategic reserve. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described his conversations with Trump as "very, very emotional," while White House economists estimate the deals could save $529 billion over the next decade, including $64.3 billion in Medicaid savings.

President Trump announced on Monday that his administration has signed separate drug-pricing agreements with nine mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, expanding his Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) pricing push beyond Big Pharma. The companies include Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio Pharma, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and UCB, which have agreed to reduce prescription drug prices to match those in comparable developed countries. In return, they receive a reprieve from import tariffs on pharmaceutical ingredients, contingent on expanding domestic manufacturing, with a collective commitment of at least $19.6 billion in U.S. manufacturing. Some companies also agreed to contribute active pharmaceutical ingredients to a government stockpile reserve, such as Teva supplying 45 metric tons of metronidazole and UCB providing 163 tons of levetiracetam. With these additions, the total number of drugmakers with MFN agreements has risen to 26, covering 89% of the branded drug market, and the administration has called on Congress to codify the policy through the Great Healthcare Plan.

Stock index futures pointed to a weaker open on Tuesday, setting Wall Street up for a lower start to September as investors monitored renewed tensions in the Middle East. The Nasdaq rose 3.9% in August after falling 3.2% in July and 2.8% in June, with strong technology earnings helping drive the recovery despite late-month volatility tied to higher oil prices and geopolitical tensions. Anthropic has reportedly agreed to a $35B computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, as the AI company moves to rapidly expand computing capacity; Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center tied to the project. President Donald Trump announced new drug-pricing agreements with Astellas, BeOne Medicines, CSL, BridgeBio, Sun Pharmaceutical, and UCB, which agreed to offer medicines to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices. South Korea proposed a record 820.9T won ($597B) budget for 2027, up 12.8% from this year's plan, with AI and semiconductors among key priorities, and AI spending set to nearly double to 21.3T won. Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT has started producing small quantities of HBM3E, an advanced memory used in AI chips, and plans to expand production in 2027, while Alibaba's T-Head and Cambricon Technologies are testing the memory for potential use in products as early as next year.

President Donald Trump introduced a new set of drug-pricing deals with global pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotechs on Monday, advancing efforts to cut healthcare costs for American consumers. Deals were signed with Astellas, BeOne Medicines, CSL, BridgeBio, Sun Pharmaceutical, and UCB SA, Trump said in an Oval Office event with executives, according to Reuters. These companies have offered drugs to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices, which Trump described as a tremendous discount that should bring down medical costs. Israel's Teva, which also attended, said it is still in discussions with the administration on a potential agreement. The number of drugs covered and the discounts remain unclear, as the White House did not release details and some companies described terms as private. The deals follow earlier agreements with 17 of the world's largest drugmakers, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk, which agreed to cut prices for federal health programs and sell some medicines directly to patients through a Trump-branded website in return for tariff relief.