38 Wednesday November 10 2021 | the times
Business
Economist challenges to
lead US Federal Reserve
Callum Jones
US Business CorrespondentA dedicated unit for AstraZeneca’s
vaccines and antibody therapies is
being created, although uncertainty
remains over the group’s long-term
commitment to the speciality.
The Anglo-Swedish drugs company
said that the new division would
combine research and development,
manufacturing, commercial and
medical teams and was being created to
“optimise the management” of its
emerging portfolio of assets for respira-
tory infections.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca said:
“The team will be dedicated to our
Covid-19 vaccine, our long-acting anti-
everybody wants a Gucci handbag, a
John Deere tractor, a JCB loadall and a
Mercedes car,” Fox-Marrs, 52, said. Not
so in the US, where talk of its British
industry legacy makes customers’ eyes
“glaze over... I sit here as a Brit today
very proud of our heritage at JCB, but
also knowing that it doesn’t really mean
anything. The past is the past and you
can’t live on the past, you’ve got to live
on the future.”
It is JCB’s work for the US military,
and its development of a high-mobility
excavator 16 years ago, that executives
believe caused many industry figures in
the country take note. About 1,350 of
the machines are in use. Now demandThree letters on the front of the vast
factory ensure there can be no confu-
sion about its owner. They also mean
there can be no doubt about that
owner’s ambition.
From this 1,000-acre pocket of rural
Staffordshire transported to the out-
skirts of Savannah, Georgia, JCB is
plotting its transatlantic expansion.
The digger maker, one of Britain’s
largest privately owned businesses, is
set to invest hundreds of millions of
pounds to increase its production here
deep in the American south.
While its machines are ubiquitous on
construction sites across the UK, until
relatively recently the company had
struggled to make its mark in the
United States. Having spent decades
trying to gain a foothold, staff recall
with a wince how only a few years ago
prospective customers still asked what
“JBC” had to offer.
JCB “definitely struggled for a period
of time”, Richard Fox-Marrs, president
and chief executive of its North
America division, recalled inside his
office at the plant in Pooler, about ten
miles west of downtown Savannah. The
country had “always been up there” as
a place where “we’ve got to do better...
“Now, all of a sudden, we are.”
Founded in 1945, JCB has twenty-
two manufacturing sites on four conti-
nents, building excavators, loaders,
forklifts, tractors and more. The com-
pany is based in Rocester, in the rural
woodlands and fields between Stoke
and Derby, and is owned by the
billionaire Bamford family, led by Lord
Bamford, 76, the son of its founder.
It has a global workforce of 12,000,
including almost 1,000 in America. The
world’s largest economy provides only
a small fraction of JCB’s revenue,
however; North America generates a
mere 5 per cent of its business. This has
risen from 2.5 per cent in the past five
years and over the next five the com-
pany plans to double its US business
again. It also says that it is on track to
generate revenue of more than $1 bil-
lion in the region for the first time this
year.
There are plenty of markets where
the JCB brand is powerful. “In Russia,Winning the
After initially failing to
gain a foothold, JCB
can see a breakthrough,
Callum Jones writes
Executives believe JCB’s work for theAstraZeneca creates new vaccines unit
Alex Ralph body combination and our develop-
mental vaccine addressing multiple
variants of concern, as well as to our
existing portfolio for respiratory viral
disease.”
The unit will be led by Iskra Reic, a
member of AstraZeneca’s senior execu-
tive team and executive vice-president
for Europe and Canada.
Despite its formation, it is unclear
whether AstraZeneca plans to retain
and build the vaccines business beyond
the pandemic. The group licensed the
Covid-19 vaccine from the University of
Oxford last year. It committed to pro-
viding equitable access to the vaccine
and at no profit during the pandemic
and to put in place a global manu-
facturing consortium and distribution
network.
AstraZeneca is one of the world’s
largest drugs groups, but was not
among the industry’s vaccines special-
ists when the pandemic struck. It is still
awaiting approval for its Covid jab from
the US Food and Drug Administration
almost a year after competitors re-
ceived emergency use authorisations.
The UK government decided to priori-
tise the Pfizer vaccine for its booster
campaign. Sales of the vaccine more
than tripled to $894 million in the
second quarter of this year from
$275 million in the first three months.
Shares in AstraZeneca fell by 42p, or
0.4 per cent, to £92.89.The White House is considering
Jerome Powell’s future as chairman of
the Federal Reserve as officials mull
over replacing him with a former senior
figure in the Obama administration.
Lael Brainard, the only Demo-
crat on the Fed’s board of gover-
nors, was a Treasury under-
secretary before President
Obama appointed her to join
the central bank in 2014.
She was interviewed for the
chairmanship while visiting
the White House last week,
according to Bloomberg.
Powell’s first term as gover-
nor expires in the new year
and President Biden must
decide between grant-
ing the Republican,appointed by President Trump, four
more years or handing the job to some-
one else. He said this month he would
announce a decision “fairly quickly”.
Brainard, 59, left, is an economist and
former consultant at McKinsey. She is
the only potential candidate to succeed
the incumbent. However, most
pundits expect Biden to grant Pow-
ell, 68, a further term. Brainard
works closely with him and is
widely viewed to share similar
views on monetary policy.
Powell, however, has been
criticised after trading by
top Fed officials at the
height of the pandemic.
Last month he an-
nounced a crackdown
on investment activity
after an outcry that
preceded the resigna-
tion of two policymakers.