In Pfizer's $100 billion battle to win British drugmaker AstraZeneca , business and politics meet in a grassy field on the edge of the historic university city of Cambridge, Reuters reported. This is where AstraZeneca plans to open a new $500 million research and corporate headquarters by 2016 - the centrepiece of CEO Pascal Soriot's plan to overhaul the company and, the government hopes, a new beacon for British life sciences. Ministers have little ultimate leverage over Pfizer but have insisted in talks this week with the company's boss Ian Read that he push ahead with the planned Cambridge facility if he buys AstraZeneca, according to people familiar with the matter. "We realise that the medical research community and others are keen that if - and it's not a decision for us to make - this goes ahead that there should be a maximum commitment to R&D in the UK," Britain's science minister David Willetts told Reuters on Thursday. "It's a point I and (finance minister) George (Osborne) and (business minister) Vince (Cable) all made very clearly to Pfizer." But Pfizer, which wants to acquire AstraZeneca partly to make cost savings, argues it cannot give any promises on future investment and jobs until AstraZeneca engages in discussions and allows it to see its books. "We are in early stages and it is premature to speculate on any specific impact this would have on facilities," a Pfizer spokesman said. AstraZeneca has rebuffed two approaches by Pfizer which is expected to come back with a revised offer before a May 26 deadline for it to "put up or shut up" under UK takeover rules. The stand-off shows how governments are struggling in the face of a wave of cross-border deal-making involving multinational corporations. France, with a long history of industrial intervention, is finding it has little room to manoeuvre against General Electric's ambitions to buy the power business of TGV train-maker Alstom. In Britain, the position is reversed. Here the government champions open markets but behind the scenes officials are fighting hard to ensure an outcome in the national interest. -- SPA 00:04 LOCAL TIME 21:04 GMT تغريد
