Pharma Industry Archive

Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO James Cornelius said in a recent earnings call that due to its healthy cash position it may be on the prowl for biotech acquisitions. That’s ironic because it is looking more like BMS itself could be the company to be acquired, possibly by Sanofi-Aventis. You can read the rumors here and here that suggest Sanofi-Aventis is interested in acquiring BMS. The scenario...

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Until now, Sepracor’s Lunesta sleeping pill has enjoyed one advantage over Sanofi-Aventis’s Ambien CR: a superior reputation for safety. The drug is approved by the FDA for long-term use, unlike many of its rivals. And it’s not a benzodiazepine. That reputation changed over the weekend as it emerged that Isiah Thomas, the most annoying basketball manager in the NBA, had allegedly taken an...

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GlaxoSmithKline tops ethics ranking — … well, at least among other pharma companies, none of whom cracked the top 10. Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson were second and third in the sector, respectively. The quarterly list comes from Swiss firm Covalence. The 7200 employees facing layoffs at Merck will probably not quibble over its tenth place finish. [Source: Eye on...

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Eli Lilly employed a technical accounting term to describe the $1.4 billion Zyprexa settlement as “not-meaningful.” While the payout to states over lawsuits that allege the drug was mismarketed is obviously very meaningful — the company reported a net loss of $465.6 million this quarter — the term highlights the way that drug companies try to persuade investors to look...

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The CDC studied 370,000 doses of Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for HPV and cervical cancer, and found that the drug is not linked to the risks that the media and conservative activists say it is. The news will come as a frustration to the growing body of Americans who believe that vaccines are either poisonous to children or a socialist plot against freedom of choice; and the journalists who...

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Obama health plan could cost pharma billions — According to Boston Consulting Group, the Obama health plan’s provision for negotiations on Medicare drug prices could cost drug makers between $10 and $30 billion in revenue. Obama has still received three times the donations McCain has received from drug companies, perhaps because McCain campaigned for similarly expensive negotiations...

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GlaxoSmithKline will become the latest company to publish all its payments to doctors, and those payments will be capped at $150,000 a year, CEO Andrew Witty said. GSK previously opposed doctor-cash transparency. The move — a stark U-turn — is a mirror image of the one performed by Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter a few weeks ago. The move is a healthy one because it will reveal to the...

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Drug companies have been the eye of the storm in the recent liquidity crash. High profitability, high cashflow (and making products that people literally can’t live without) have left them in a comfortable economic position compared to other consumer-oriented companies. Here’s a selection from recent earnings calls and announcements, from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Bayer, Abbott...

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Sanofi-Aventis boosts China R&D — The French firm is expanding its program in Shanghai, adding new research directions (including cancer and diabetes) and a new biometrics facility. The work comes through a partnership with the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. [Source: FierceBiotech] Wyeth still paying for Fen-Phen — A New Jersey court awarded $3 million to a former...

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Pfizer’s smoking cessation product, Chantix, seems to be going down the path of Exubera in the U.S.: Sales were down 49 percent to $96 million in America, and down globally by 24 percent to $182 million, making it a marginal drug for Pfizer. But in foreign territories, sales were up 60 percent to $86 million. Essentially, Americans have walked away from the drug based on its safety...

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