Pharma Industry Archive

Combined executive pay at Amylin rose 10.2 percent last year even though the company lost 50 percent more money than it did the year before, according to a filing with the SEC. Amylin has not made a profit in the last five years, despite its revenues going from zero to $765 million. Amylin CEO Daniel Bradbury’s total compensation went up 11 percent to $4.5 million. The company also gave...

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Amylin CEO Daniel Bradbury may be wishing that Novo Nordisk’s failed competitor to its diabetes drug Byetta had actually been approved by the FDA. Had Novo’s liraglutide passed muster, no one would have gotten the jitters over whether Byetta gives you cancer or not. At Amylin’s conference call a couple of days ago, the cancer issue was front and center. Bradbury was no doubt...

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Roche saw a healthy uptick in sales, recording a 7 percent increase to $11.6 billion in Q1 2009. The news brings us one quarter closer to the point where Genentech disappears completely inside Roche, and pharma-watchers on the outside of both companies will see Genentech’s detailed disclosure of its financials disappear behind the veil of European financial rules, which require much less...

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Sanofi-Aventis sponsored a set of “best-practice” guidelines for dealing with venous thromboembolism in Australia that has become controversial because of their recommendation of prophylactic use of heparin (a Sanofi drug), and because the guidelines were not properly peer-reviewed even though doctors widely took them as gospel. Patients who are given heparin run a risk of...

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With its costly Zyprexa settlements out of the way, Eli Lilly got back to business as usual: Raising drug prices. And it seems to have paid off. Lilly’s Q1 revenue was $5 billion, up from $4.8 billion the year before (but down sequentially from mid-2008 when quarterly revenues touched $5.2 billion). The lack of legal settlements — as much as $7.2 billion* $3.2 billion since 2006...

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Amylin filed a sarcastic letter describing phone conversations it had with angry investor Carl Ichan over the past few days. “Sarcastic,” because the final point in the letter (which you can read here) is this: Finally, on our call you asked, “Who is Dan Bradbury?”  Dan Bradbury is Amylin’s President and Chief Executive Officer.  Dan has been our CEO since March...

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Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bayer, Roche and AstraZeneca all agree on healthcare reform in the U.S.: They want to see the system changed so long as it in no way hurts their companies. During the 1990s drug companies furiously fought the Clinton plan for universal coverage with TV ads featuring “Harry and Louise” (pictured), a kitchen-table couple who just hated everything about reform. This...

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British corporate governance watchdog group PIRC is urging AstraZeneca shareholders to vote against management’s annual report and compensation plan because the company gives too much money to U.S. politicians and its top executives. The move signals the difference between the U.S. and the U.K. on compensation for executives: In the U.K., there is more pressure for compensation to be...

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Pfizer has launched an “internal investigation” into how a bunch of promotional Viagra boxer shorts ended up being sent to doctors in Ireland. The company has written to the docs that received the gifts and given them a postage-paid envelope for those that want to return them. Unsurprisingly, the Irish Times reports there have been few takers: One GP who received the despatch said...

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Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital seem to have won a small battle in their war for Amylin. The company’s board has decided not* to delay commiting financial suicide in the face of their insurgent board election bid. The board said today will “approve” the rival slates of directors proposed by Eastbourne and Icahn. If the slates win it willthus avoiding the trigger of a...

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