Pharma Industry Archive

A jury verdict in Wisconsin could expose Pfizer to up to $21 billion in fines after the company was found guilty of gaming Medicaid. It will likely prompt a wave of settlements from other drug companies that are on the hook in this raft of cases. Pfizer, as the successor-in-interest of its acquisition, Pharmacia, must pay only $9 million under the current decision. The case now enters a penalty...

More...

The Connecticut Law Tribune claims that The Constant Gardener, a John Le Carré book and later a movie with the same name, is in fact based on the Pfizer Trovan case. But is the claim true? A look at the timeline of both the case and the book suggest it is possible … as long as Le Carré is a very fast writer. While many have drawn parallels between the two — the movie and the...

More...

UPDATE: Elan says the  share awards are part of “the normal annual compensation process” at Elan. See Elan’s full statement in the comments section below. Elan’s senior management have hatched a plan to enrich themselves in the event of a sale or takeover of their troubled company. At the same time, dissident investor Jack Schuler has accused Elan of not opposing the...

More...

AstraZeneca is to argue in a Florida court next month that documents turned up in a lawsuit over weight-gain side effects of Seroquel should remain secret and sealed. The company is arguing it would be better for public health for Seroquel patients not to read the papers, according to The St. Pete Times. Here’s AZ’s reasoning: This (disclosure) could jeopardize public safety by...

More...

Novo Nordisk’s annual report is out and it contains some interesting stuff on senior management compensation. CEO Lars Rebien Sørensen received total compensation of DKK10.8 million (about $1.8 million). That was modest compared to his counterparts at American companies. (At Eli Lilly, CEO John Lechleiter got $13 million and Sidney Taurel got a $40 million retirement package. At Wyeth,...

More...

GlaxoSmithKline has pulled a campaign promoting hepatitis vaccines for travelers to the Dominican Republic following political pressure from the government there, even though DR is a hotspot for hepatitis and travelers really should consider vaccinations before going. The DR government requested the ad be pulled because it was harming tourism, according to Dominican Today. Canadians are major...

More...

Former Pfizer vp Dorothy Wetzel popped up in Ad Age today claiming that Bayer’s corrective ad campaign for Yaz birth control “will cause drug companies to get way more conservative” with their advertising. “They’re going to test and test and test their spots, and ultimately the advertising won’t be as effective.” In fact, this is not what the effect of...

More...

What are we to make of the Bloomberg report that Pfizer director James Kilts sold $259,772 of his shares in the company around the same time Pfizer began negotations to acquire Wyeth? In acquisitions, the buying company’s stock usually declines because its cash is being spent on the selling company’s stock. Thus, Kilts appears to have sold 86 percent of his Pfizer stock at precisely...

More...

When Pfizer and Wyeth complete their merger, the new company might look a bit like Johnson & Johnson: a collection of relatively small units working autonomously. That scenario emerged in a chat over a cup of tea that BNET had yesterday at Pfizer’s New York HQ with vp/worldwide communications Ray Kerins and director of worldwide communications Christopher Loder. Merger plans are...

More...

Teva Pharmaceuticals is to lay off 1,000 or more employees worldwide as part of its acquisition of Barr Pharmaceuticals. Three hundred of those layoffs will be in at Teva’s IVAX plant in DOral, Fla., according to the Miami Herald. Those workers may be wishing they were Croatian, however. At Teva’s Zagreb facility, 790 employees are to go. But check out the deal they get....

More...