Threat to Advair from cheap generics greets GSK's new CEO

London

EMMA Walmsley, GlaxoSmithKline's incoming CEO, will take over Britain's biggest drugmaker at a challenging time but the 47-year-old also inherits the flexibility to do deals and make key choices on new drugs.

Just four days before she moves into the top job on April 1, US regulators could approve the first substitutable generic version of GSK's inhaled lung drug Advair, which has raked in more than a US$1 billion in sales every year since 2001.