Panmure House convenes global investors and policymakers to address antimicrobial resistance
Edinburgh Business School's Panmure House has published a new report exploring how investors and market actors can help tackle one of the most pressing global challenges of our time: antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The report, Market Solutions for Antimicrobial Effectiveness: Engaging Investors in Antimicrobial Effectiveness, captures insights from the first Panmure House Dialogues, held in November 2025.
The dialogue brought together leaders from healthcare, finance, policy, academia and industry to examine how markets can be strengthened to conserve antimicrobial effectiveness (AME): the clinical efficacy and accessibility of life-saving antimicrobials.
At Panmure House, we believe markets can be part of the solution if incentives, information and institutions are properly aligned.
Antimicrobials underpin modern healthcare and food systems. Yet as resistance rises, their effectiveness is being eroded, creating growing operational, financial and systemic risks. Failure to contain AMR could result in a US$1.7 trillion annual reduction in global economic output by 2050, according to estimates cited in the report
Despite this, AMR is rarely treated as a strategic economic asset in investment or corporate decision-making.
Hosted at Panmure House in Edinburgh, known as economist Adam Smith’s final residence, the dialogue applied Smith’s insights on markets, incentives, and public goods to a contemporary global challenge. While Smith championed markets, he also recognised that they require sound rules and aligned incentives to serve the public good. Participants explored how those principles might inform modern efforts to address AMR.
The report sets out a shared framework for action built around four foundational pillars: framing AME as essential economic infrastructure; mapping stakeholders across health and food systems; quantifying financial and systemic risks; and aligning action across sectors. It also outlines practical pathways for collaboration between investors, companies, governments and global institutions.
Participants included representatives from organisations such as the Access to Medicine Foundation, the AMR Action Fund, FAIRR, Legal & General, Baillie Gifford, the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, and the Fleming Initiative, alongside researchers from Heriot-Watt University. The report was developed with philanthropic support from Baillie Gifford.
Professor Adam Dixon, Adam Smith Chair and Director of Panmure House, said:
“Antimicrobial resistance is often framed purely as a public health issue. But it is also an economic one. Antimicrobials underpin everything from cancer treatment to food production. If we fail to conserve their effectiveness, the consequences will be felt across markets and economies.
At Panmure House, we believe markets can be part of the solution if incentives, information and institutions are properly aligned. This dialogue marks the beginning of a sustained programme of engagement to ensure antimicrobial effectiveness is recognised and protected as a vital form of global economic infrastructure.”
Dr Lucy Naga, the report's author, adds: "The Panmure House Dialogue created a space for actors with different incentives, constraints, and levers to come together, understand their interdependencies, and explore new ways of acting together. What emerged was a clearer sense of both the problem and the path forward."
The Panmure House Dialogues are part of a broader programme positioning Panmure House as a university-based think tank focused on economics, policy and business. Building on Adam Smith’s intellectual legacy, the initiative seeks to connect academic research with real-world decision-making and global policy debates.