Investment freeze in Germany

Roche has put all future investment decisions in Germany on hold, the company's German chief Daniel Steiners told the newspaper Die Welt, and he tied the move to federal health policy. Steiners said the company wants to understand how Germany will develop and whether the country remains a partner that offers reliable framework conditions. He added that Roche's global headquarters shares that view. He also argued that policy had recently destroyed a great deal of trust in the pharmaceutical sector, even though the coalition agreement promises to strengthen the pharmaceutical location.

In the interview, Steiners summed up the freeze in one sentence:

“We have put all future investment decisions in Germany on hold for the time being.”

The health savings law

Steiners targets a law meant to keep statutory health insurance contributions stable, which he says places more burden on the pharmaceutical industry. He argued that the government had chosen short-term savings over structural reform of the statutory health insurance system, and he warned that such savings usually fade, leaving the same deficit behind. A planned location clause, which would ease manufacturer rebates for drugmakers that research or produce in Germany, could only partly offset the damage, he said. Economy minister Katherina Reiche acknowledged that the pharmaceutical industry must contribute to the reform, while the government is discussing an exemption mechanism for some companies. Steiners described a break with the past: the automatic assumption that a company keeps investing in a location in this form no longer exists.

“Instead of tackling the structural problems of the statutory health insurance, politics relies on short-term savings and extra burdens for industry.”

Penzberg and the wider pullback

The figures on Roche's German workforce differ between reports, with one putting it at about 18,000 people and another at nearly 19,000 across four sites, equal to 17% of the global staff. The Penzberg site is unaffected, and an expansion already approved there, worth more than 600 million euros, is going ahead, a company spokeswoman told Reuters. Steiners also praised US industrial policy, saying Washington has recognised the importance of strengthening its industry and makes investing there as simple and attractive as possible. Steiners placed Europe in direct competition with the United States and China, which he said are doing everything they can to attract investment to their own locations.

“Europe should above all learn to make an effort again.”

Peers and the investor summit

Eli Lilly said this summer it would halve planned German investments of 2.3 billion euros, and Boehringer Ingelheim dropped 900 million euros of planned spending entirely, Handelsblatt reported. Roche says it has invested almost 3.8 billion euros in Germany since 2020 and has been present in the country for 130 years. For 2025 to 2030 the group expects revenue growth of 16.3 billion Swiss francs, which it says will more than offset 6.2 billion francs in expected losses from expiring patents. To back that course, Roche is leaning more on artificial intelligence in research, including a new innovation centre in Boston focused on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The announcement landed hours before Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened Germany's first investment summit in Berlin on Monday, 19 October, a format modelled on France's Choose France initiative.