The last few decades are widely believed to represent a ‘new economy’: for some, it is a high-tech or ‘knowledge-based’ economy; for others, one dominated by finance. Finance has certainly exploded, and we have seen huge breakthroughs in high-tech sectors like pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, these same sectors face intensified public scrutiny, over issues ranging from monopolisation to pricing, product safety, and more. The nature and institutional context of the contemporary pharmaceutical sector affords shareholders major pay-outs, sowing resentment among the public who are forced to pay its rents even in the face of apparently slowed innovation.

This thesis explores and explains how contemporary pharmaceutical business models operate—in particular, how there are shaped by financial considerations and intangible assets. Mixed methods are used, bringing together quantitative analysis of ‘big pharma’ accounts with a qualitative case study. The former incorporates data from 20 global big pharma firms selected based on their revenue over time and headquartered in 3 regions, spanning the years 1991–2017 inclusive. The latter focuses on Martin Shkreli, (former CEO of 2 notable firms that acquired and hiked the prices of several drugs) and is based on news media reports and other publicly accessible documents, such as investor presentations.

Financial holdings, engineering and rent-seeking seem less significant to big pharma than other sectors. Big pharma remains committed to innovation, despite its partial commodification and outsourcing through takeovers and markets for intangibles. However, financial thinking does inspire the adoption by some firms of novel and controversial business strategies and models.

These findings challenge influential notions within the literature, such as the perception that big pharma has largely abandoned R&D, or that small start-ups are by their nature innovative. They also strengthen the case for understanding financialisation as an uneven and combined phenomenon, as well as contributing to the process of synthesising the literatures on financialisation and assetisation.