Goldman Sachs is in talks to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to a large pharmaceutical company, in the first evidence of a new business model for the sector that will see financing shifted away from funding companies and towards targeted co-development of specific medicines.

Jon Symonds, managing director at the investment bank in London and former finance director of AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group, said a first deal to create a new hybrid model of research and development should be finalised early next year.