By Micah Maidenberg
The S&P/BNY Mellon of American depositary receipts rose 0.3% Thursday to 169.76. The European index closed at 143.48, up 0.5%. The Asian index slipped 1% to 239.06, while the Latin American index was off almost 2% at 219.4. The index for emerging-markets ADRs recorded a 1.6% decline to close at 417.05.
ADRs for drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline PLC gained 0.9% to $40.17 a share. Elliott Management Corp. on Thursday issued a letter criticizing the pharmaceutical giant for what it said was a "poor record of execution and value creation," and urging its board to bring in new directors with sector expertise.
In addition, the activist investor wants GlaxoSmithKlineto run a robust process in selecting executives to run its pharmaceutical business and its consumer-health unit. The company has planned to separate the latter unit off into its own company.
A GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson said the company's transformation efforts are designed to address legacy issues and more, Dow Jones Newswires reported earlier.
Meanwhile, ADRs for Alterity Therapeutics Ltd. jumped almost 65% to $2.14 a share.
The depository receipts for company traded heavily, according to FactSet. Alterity said in a statement Thursday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted it a new patent that "secures a broad monopoly over a new class of iron chaperones, a technology capable of redistributing excess iron in the central nervous system."
Excess iron in the brain, the company said, is "implicated" in diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The company is pursuing patent protections in other jurisdictions, Alterity added.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
This article was corrected at 5:01 p.m. ET because the original version misspelled the company name Alterity Therapeutics Ltd. as Alerity Therapeutics.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
07-01-21 1657ET
