Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX) Wednesday pledged to continue spending more than 8 billion Swiss francs ($8.4 billion) a year to find and develop new drugs, defying a wider trend in the pharmaceutical industry to cut costs as many of the Swiss drug maker’s rivals are faced with competition from cheap generics for their best-selling products.
Roche has a stable of relatively new cancer drugs that still see enviable sales growth, and few of its blockbuster products face imminent competition.
