The issue focused on an industry-wide review of overtime pay in the pharmaceutical industry that has led to an "ambitious goal" for taking the average salary paid by its large-scale pharmaceutical suppliers up to $100,000 a year by 2023, or around $3.5m a year for 2,700 employees. That would be just a third of the US$6.9bn pay bill paid to pharma companies in the year to September 2014.


The UK government would lead the