CEO says Lilly still not interested in huge acquisitions

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Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co, the world’s biggest maker of psychiatric drugs, remains disinterested in making big acquisitions and aims to launch two molecules a year by 2013 from the company’s own pipeline, CEO John Lechleiter said Tuesday, re-emphasizing a strategy he has outlined numerous times in the past year.

Lilly is under pressure to find new sources of revenue because the patents on many of it best-selling drugs are set to expire in the next few years.

“With the challenges we face in patents expirations, the kinds of deals we do are aimed at this point more in the direction of finding molecules that have the potential of launch in the near term,” Lechleiter said in an interview in Breukelen, Netherlands.

Last week, the Lilly CEO told Reuters the same thing:

"We have enough critical mass to achieve breakthrough innovation," Lechleiter said to Reuters in an interview at the drugmaker's headquarters. "Our basic rationale continues to be that large-scale combinations don't achieve long-term growth."

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