Lets be honest though, Rover went out of business because they were making cars no one wanted to buy. I don't doubt that the management of the company was a sham and also don't doubt that people didn't make the most of the situation because the government invested so much political capital in helping out a company that deserved no help.
Likewise with GSK and other pharma companies, there is two sides to every story. As it stands at the moment bringing a drug to market is an incredibly expensive business. Firstly you obviously have to invest in the research to discover and develop the drug in the first place. Then you have the four stage testing process required to get clearance for the drug, which in itself can often take several years. These two steps take a heck of a lot of time, effort and money, indeed it's widely regarded that drugs these days require at least £500m per year in revenue to even break even because the testing process is such that it's better to stop potentially good drugs from going through than let a single bad one out. Then of course the companies have to rely on the legal system to protect the patent achieved through all the work conducted as above. There are many western companies that look to get around this any which way they can and effectively release cheaper clones onto the market having done none of the research and testing. In China patent law is non-existant so anything goes out there. So before you have a pop at the drugs companies for trying to recoup their costs it pays to look at both sides of the story
As for Barclays, well they'll be Chinese before long if the Chinese government have any say in it
