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Wellcome to sell GSK shares
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November 29, 2001: 6:02 a.m. ET
World's largest medical charity to sell stock worth at least $1.4 billion
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LONDON (CNN) - The Wellcome Trust, the world's largest medical charity, said on Thursday it is selling shares worth at least £1 billion ($1.4 billion) in GlaxoSmithKline.
Its decision to sell up to 125 million shares in Europe's biggest drugs company is part of a move to spread the risk of its £13 billion investment portfolio. Glaxo has offered to buy 55 million, or $1 billion worth, of its stock from the charitable trust.
Wellcome Trust, which had a controlling 40 percent stake in drugmaker Wellcome before Glaxo took over the group in 1995, has been gradually reducing its stake in the world's second-biggest drug company.
GSK spokesman Martin Sutton told Reuters the latest sale, if implemented in full, would cut the charity's holding in the enlarged group from around 2.5 percent to some 0.5 percent.
Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity, established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936. Its annual spend on research has increased from an average of £28 million in the 1980s to £600 million in 2000/2001. It also helped fund the mapping of the human genome.
Glaxo's stock slipped 1 percent to1,797 pence in early London trading on Thursday. 
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