Novartis AG (SWX:NOVN) will seek acquisitions. Vasant Narasimhan said, "Now also, our capital structure supports flexibility and we can certainly discuss this more in the group section. When you look at our credit rating positioning both in Moody's and S&P not challenged versus the peer set.

And also, when you look at our relative leverage to our peer set, again, one of the least levered companies in the sector. What this does is it gives us capital flexibility, flexibility to look at bolt-on M&A, but also to look in the future at returning capital to shareholders as appropriate. And we continue to look at this on an ongoing basis to make sure we're doing the right things for the business and for all of you".

"With respect to our core business. With respect to M&A, of course, evaluate the full range of potential opportunities, primarily looking at Taf/Mek and can it actually help us by core TAs or could the help bolster one of our key technology areas, but it's not a top priority. Our priority knows to drive core business.

When we do look at M&A, I think right now, we focus our energy more in the sub-$4 billion space, of course also while evaluating the ongoing opportunities in larger deals. And so what we plan on doing completely the current share buyback, which completes in the middle of next year and continue to evaluate M&A. And if at that point in time, we have excess capital, continue to return it to shareholders in an appropriate way".