Health Stocks Slide as Trump Picks Vaccine Skeptic Kennedy

(Bloomberg) -- Pharmaceutical stocks declined as President-elect Donald Trump said he’s tapping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services, potentially elevating a prominent vaccine skeptic and broader industry critic to a top role on health policy.

Companies that make immunizations bore the brunt of the losses, with France’s Sanofi SA — a maker of vaccines including for influenza — and London-listed GSK Plc — whose products include Shingrix for shingles — both dropping more than 4% in early European trading.

Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Papadakis cut his rating on GSK to hold from buy following the news.

“We consider vaccines to be amongst the greatest scientific achievements to impact public health: unfortunately this view is not shared by the nominee,” he wrote in a note to clients.

US-listed Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Novavax Inc. extended declines in premarket trading after slumping Thursday.

The declines went beyond vaccines, however, with US-exposed European health-care shares falling more broadly as Trump said in a post on X that the industry had engaged in “deception, misinformation, and disinformation.”

Novo Nordisk A/S fell as much as 3.3%, while Roche Holding AG declined 3.4% as more than 80% of the stocks in the Stoxx 600 Health Care Index retreated.

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Kennedy’s selection “could have far-reaching and difficult-to-project implications for the biotechnology sector, adding a considerable layer of uncertainty and challenging investability,” Brian Abrahams, head of global health-care research at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients.

Kennedy, 70, is the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. He left the Democratic party to mount an independent presidential bid before eventually endorsing Republican Trump.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he called vaccines against the virus a “crime against humanity” and compared them to the Nazi Holocaust. The remarks drew condemnation, including from his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines.

As head of HHS, Kennedy would lead a sprawling federal department that encompasses more than 100 programs supporting medicine, public health and social services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration.