Pharma Industry Archive

Mylan may have made a loss of $181 million last year following a goodwill writedown of $385 million, but its top execs made out like bandits. They shared $22 million in total compensation in 2008, compared to $15.2 million in 2007, according to a proxy filing with the SEC. That was a combined 41 percent pay raise (not including EMEA president Didier Barret, who wasn’t on the 2007...

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The race to produce a blockbuster anti-obesity pill — a contest that no company has yet won — got interesting this week with the news, via AP, that Arena Pharmaceuticals‘ data showed that its contender, lorcaserin, showed only 3.6 percent more effectiveness than a placebo. The FDA wants to see 5 percent more effectiveness — thus Arena’s stock tumbled. The AP...

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Bayer’s refusal to explain publicly why its Institute, W. Va., chemical plant exploded last August has finally made the Big Media. The NYT summarized the issue over the weekend. BNET noted the matter back on Feb. 25. Back story: After a fire (pictured) ripped through Bayer’s cropscience plant killing two people and forcing residents in seven towns to “shelter in place,”...

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Two separate moves, by Sanofi-Aventis and Sepracor, illustrate the power that drug companies can have over the taxes of towns they base their headquarters in. Sanofi backed out of a deal in Pennsylvania that would have saved it 10 years of taxes in order to cut its relocation expenses, after a bidding war between towns offering tax deals to attract a new Sanofi office. Sepracor struck a deal...

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Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer have funded an online CME course at the University of Wisconsin that favors the prescription of their drugs and either plays down their efficacy or their side effects, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The online courses were in antismoking (Pfizer/Chantix), restless legs syndrome (Boehringer/Mirapex and GSK/Requip), and PMS...

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Wyeth CEO Bernard Poussot received a 69 percent compensation raise in 2008, to $21.3 million, in addition to a $24 million change-in-control bonus for selling his company to Pfizer.* Wyeth also took the explanation of executive perks to new levels, saying that Wyeth “requires” Poussot to travel on private jets and helicopters even for “personal” reasons: For security and...

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Dr. Joseph Biederman, the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Researcher, has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors for all information he produced in litigation surrounding the alleged off-label promotion of Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal for children, according to the NYT. This means that the feds will be looking closely at the transcript of a two-day...

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Valeant Pharmaceuticals saw its revenues decline, its net loss quadruple, and its cash sink by $109 million in 2008. But the compensation of its top executives doubled, to $19.7 million in 2008 from $8.6 million in 2007. Half of that, $9.7 million, went to CEO J. Michael Pearson (pictured). The previous year the CEO was given just $4 million in total compensation. The jolting disconnect between...

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Bristol-Myers Squibb will pay $2.1 million to settle FTC allegations it made false statements regarding its deal over bloodthinner Plavix with Apotex, according to the WSJ. The news means that BMS has settled all its regulatory troubles over Plavix with the FTC and the states for a total of just $4.2 million. That’s a sum so small it’s a mere roundung error in BMS’s...

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Although it has been months since Fred Goodwin lost his NPR show The Infinite Mind after it emerged that he had taken $1.3 million from drug companies and didn’t tell anyone, the former producer of that show continues to wage a war over what was disclosed, who disclosed it, and when it happened. Bill Lichtenstein, the ex-producer of The Infinite Mind, recently extracted a correction and...

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