Drug Industry’s `Easy Life’ of Price Hikes Is Over, Sanofi Says

There was a time when drugmakers could count on U.S. price increases to boost profits steadily every year. Those days are over, says Sanofi’s chief financial officer.

“It was a bit of an easy life in this industry to just increase prices to make your profits,” Jerome Contamine, the Sanofi executive, said Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Guy Johnson and Matt Miller. Companies need to produce better medicines, curb costs and diversify to adapt to the new world, he said.

Jerome Contamine

Photographer: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg

Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, was ahead of some competitors with its policy to limit U.S. price ...