The European continent, and specifically the original six members of the Common Market, provide another key marketing sphere in which Glaxo's performance can be judged. In the inter-war period, Nathans and later Glaxo Laboratories had put some effort into creating sales agencies and other outlets, with success in Greece and Italy, but rather less so elsewhere (see chapter 5). Senior executives in the 1940s felt little affinity with continental Europeans – Jephcott himself was a poor linguist – and indeed in the immediate post-war era of political dislocation and raw material shortages, it was understandable that British industrialists should concentrate on opportunities outside Europe, in the Dominions or elsewhere.

By the early 1950s economic and political conditions in Western Europe were returning to equilibrium; German and Italian growth exceeded British from the early 1950s, as too did French growth from the middle 1950s. But by then Jephcott and most of his senior colleagues in London were too committed in time and resources elsewhere to give much thought to markets across the Channel and North Sea. In mitigation it can be said that the company felt hamstrung by Treasury or Bank of England regulations and that some executives perceived that Britain's low rate of post-war investment had put the country at a disadvantage to continental Europe, both specifically in the pharmaceutical sector and in broader terms of national manufacturing competitiveness.