As if Big Pharma didn't have enough challenges. Moody's Investors Services has downgraded the entire industry's credit rating, cutting its 12-month outlook to "Negative" from "Stable."

Upcoming patent expirations [1] affect some 40 percent of most pharma companies' revenue, Moody's analyst Levesque noted. Big Pharma has been doing deals with biotech firms [1] in hopes of boosting their pipelines--deals that require lots of cash. And though the industry has a lot of cash on its books, the rate at which it's burning it is a concern.

And then there are safety problems: liability-related, as with Merck and Vioxx; and FDA-related, with the agency increasingly asking for more information and new studies before approving new drugs.

- see the report [2] from the Houston Chronicle
- check out this company-by-company risk breakdown [3]

Related Articles:
PwC to pharma: Adapt and invest or die. Report [4]
Patent 'cliff' looms for Big Pharma. Report [5]
Where's the ROI on drug R&D budgets? Report [6]
Is pharma's drug discovery model sustainable? Editorial [7]
M&A activity heats up as biotech IPOs struggle. Report [8]