Pharmaceutical business performance is widely perceived to be about robust sales, successful launches, financial results, profit margins, and the like.  However, a very crucial measure of success relates to ‘how’ the industry conducts its business and achieves its mission. Ethics and building patients’ trust are at the core of how the R&D-based biopharmaceutical industry regulates itself today.  In this opinion piece, Thomas Cueni, Director General of IFPMA, explains why the R&D-based biopharmaceutical industry has adopted the New Code of Practice and why it makes good business sense to win and retain the trust patients place in healthcare professionals, medicines and vaccines produced by the R&D-based biopharmaceutical industry.