Stockwatch: Pandora’s Interim Analysis

I was once on a teleconference for middle managers of one big UK pharmaceutical company that was merging with another while the chairman of R&D explained the competitive reasons why neither company could look into the box of R&D assets of the other before the merger completed. One wag speculated at the potential for surprise if, when the companies were finally able to look into each other's R&D boxes, both were found to be empty. Investors in a number of biotechnology companies may have had the same sinking feeling in recent weeks as the interim analyses of clinical trials were announced. I was left wondering whether we were better off in the days before the interim analysis.