As the saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the pharma industry appears to be at least a partial beneficiary of the current coronavirus pandemic. No longer do the newspaper headlines focus on excessive drug prices: all the attention...
Sandoz standalone
It is all change at Sandoz this year, as Novartis has executed a 180-degree strategy shift. No longer is it pursuing its previous policy of ever closer union with the innovative pharma division, but instead it now favours far greater autonomy for its generic...
The changing of the guard: New CEOs move in
Recent months have seen a slew of management changes at major generics companies. Some of this has been driven by shareholder dissatisfaction with poor performance (Teva being the obvious example here), but there have also been generational and other shifts that offer interesting pointers...
Hero or zero? Kåre Schultz proposes rational solutions in an irrational market
Teva’s new CEO, Kåre Schultz, has now been in place for just over three months, and at the end of last year, he laid out his plans to deal with Teva’s immediate problems of excessive debt and sliding profitability. The main highlight was massive...
Oy Vey, Teva!
Things appear to be going from bad to worse at Teva, which is giving the strong impression of being in meltdown. One can only hope that the recent Q2 results, which featured an eye-watering $6.1bn write-down of the company’s recently-acquired Actavis generics assets, mark...
The cuckoo clock ticks for management as Sandoz waits for its biosimilars to make money
At its May ‘Meet the management’ event in Basel, Sandoz was represented by Richard Francis, the MD of the business unit, Peter Goldschmidt, the regional manager for the US and Carol Lynch, head of the biosimilars business. According to Mr Francis, the choice of...
Hartmut Retzlaff falls victim to barbarian hordes
The announcement today that Hartmut Retzlaff has stepped down as CEO of Stada ‘due to a serious long-term illness’ comes as something of a surprise, but the reasons are not hard to discern. For weeks, activist investors in the form of a group called...
Into the void: All change in UK generics in 2016
Teva’s announcement last year that it was to acquire Allergan’s generic assets (‘Actavis’), came as a total surprise to the market. All the more so since Teva was, at the time, in hot pursuit of Mylan. It was particularly startling news in the UK,...
Midsummer M&A madness
The generic/specialty pharma M&A frenzy appears to have reached its apogee in recent days, with Mylan making an unsolicited bid for the OTC specialist, Perrigo and Teva subsequently bidding for Mylan – conditional on the Perrigo bid being dropped. Share prices have risen all...
Hikma: Up and away?
Crunch time may be approaching for the CEO of Hikma, Said Darwazah. Rumours have circulated recently that Hikma has received an approach from Mylan, an event which, if true, will pose a dilemma for the company’s Board. Hikma has, we believe, been the subject...