However, the long-term less good news is encoded in the cumulative raw clinical trial counts for Phases I,II and III as shown in Fig. . This shows that Phase II-to-III transitions (colloquially known as the 'valley of death') has essentially not moved the dial over the last decade, even though there can be hardly any CDEV operations who have not tried their utmost to improve their own numbers. However, these are averaged figures and the top-ten pharma companies do show signs of moving above them (as expected, since this would be one of the reasons for them achieving a high ranking). This is illustrated in Fig. . The interpretation of Fig. is that while Novartis currently leads in reporting more Phase II than Phase III drugs, other companies, such as Merck & Co., have similar numbers at both phases. As we zoom in towards centre with the orange data for pre-registration the numbers for all companies look more similar.