Archive for the ‘Ian Read’ Category
May
02
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Pfizer ($PFE) CEO Ian Read (photo) has been on the lookout for M&A deals that could bring the U.S. pharma giant new treatments for cancer, diabetes and neurological disorders amid plunging sales of the company's blockbuster heart drug Lipitor. And he tells Reuters that he's looking for buyouts with price tags of roughly $4 billion to do the job.
Followers of Pfizer won't be surprised to learn of Read's M&A appetite, yet the pharma chief happens to be scouting for deals at an interesting time in the industry and at his company. Last week, Pfizer announced the sale of the company's baby formula unit for $12 billion, as Reuters notes, providing the company with resources to focus on its core pharma business. At the same time, mid-sized drug companies such as Human Genome Sciences ($HGSI), Amylin Pharmaceuticals ($AMLN) and Warner Chilcott ($WCRX) are up for sale.
Yesterday, of course, the reality of generic competition for Lipitor reverberated after Pfizer reported that U.S. Lipitor sales shrank 71% in the first quarter. The decline of the megablockbuster franchise pressures executives to find new products to replace revenue from the falling Lipitor sales. However, Read isn't interested in filling the hole with another megadeal on par with the $67 billion merger with Wyeth a few years ago.
A "bolt-on" deal akin to Pfizer's $3.6 billion buyout of pain med specialist King Pharmaceuticals suits the company's needs, Read told Reuters. "That's not a hard number--around that [amount] or a multiple of that if it was an attractive asset."
These are good times for companies with attractive assets such as Amylin, which recently won approval for the long-lasting diabetes drug Bydureon. Gilead's ($GILD) buyout of Pharmasset for nearly $11 billion, and Bristol-Myers Squibb's ($BMY) recent offer to acquire Amylin for $3.5 billion, show that buyers are willing to shell out premiums for worthy drug developers.
The upshot: Pfizer will likely have serious competition for the size and types of deals Read wants to make.
- check out Reuters' analysis
- and news of Warner Chilcott's desire to be sold
Special Report: Ian Read - The 25 most influential people in biopharma today
Related Articles:
Shrinking Pfizer targeting new round of small, tailor-made buyouts and pacts
Pharma rides a wave of targeted M&A deals
Pfizer targets miniblockbuster prospects as Lipitor patent expires
Mar
16
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In his first year as head of Pfizer ($PFE), CEO Ian Read slashed more than $1.5 billion in R&D spending, eliminated more than 4,200 jobs and continued to look for ways to streamline the global pharmaceutical giant as it copes with generic competition for the (former) blockbuster cholesterol pill Lipitor. As Bloomberg reports, the board rewarded him with a $25 million paycheck. Broken down, that's $1.7 million for the basic salary, plus a $3.5 million cash bonus. Stocks, option awards, pension and additional benefits are also part of the equation, according to a regulatory filing cited by the news agency. Read, one of FierceBiotech's 25 most influential people in biopharma, made $17.4 million in 2010 prior to his promotion, the story notes. Board members have commented that they are focusing on performance-based compensation for top executives, despite shareholder concerns about the $24.7 million paycheck previous CEO Jeffrey Kindler received in his final year. And they said Read's salary boost corresponds with his new position as CEO. Story
Feb
07
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Focused on the bottom line
Ian Read
CEO
Pfizer
New Pfizer ($PFE) CEO Ian Read took the top spot in late 2010 with a mandate to make the sluggish drug giant more nimble, if it ever was.
Read is enormously important to the industry because his initial solution amounted to a sea change--a $1.5 billion reduction in spending on research and development. That, so far, has translated into about 4,220 job cuts announced over the previous year as of Jan. 4, including 1,100 in Connecticut, and most of the 2,400 jobs at Pfizer's Sandwich, U.K., lab, as reported by The Guardian and others. Observers will be tracking those changes closely, wondering if drastically reducing in-house R&D in favor of later-stage drug development can be more successful.
Wall Street analysts loved the greater focus on the bottom line, and now Pfizer's competitors--including Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and others--now face profound pressures to do the same unless they can improve the performance of their similarly struggling R&D operations.
The other part of the equation: Read swore off large acquisitions in favor of licensing deals and companies with mid-to-late-stage drug candidates, a potentially cost-effective way to outsource development and fill the gaps created by gutting the company's in-house R&D. Partnerships, however, remain a mixed bag for Pfizer. Earlier this year, Pfizer wrote off its $725 million partnership deal with Medivation after that company's Alzheimer's drug Dimebon disappointed in Phase III trials.
Still, the job's not over yet. Read committed to an ongoing review of all of the company's operations, with some big changes. He's streamlined some global management functions and Pfizer announced plans to shed its $3.6 billion animal health business and its $1.9 billion nutritionals business and focus on its late-stage pipeline. But some observers want the company to commit to far more aggressive downsizing and streamlining.
Read, meanwhile, is trying to keep Pfizer in play with generic competition through discounts and co-pay assistance programs, a unique solution also likely to be closely watched by industry.
Jan
11
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Pfizer is thinking small these days. In keeping with the deal-making theme at the J.P. Morgan conference, Pfizer ($PFE) CEO Ian Read carefully mapped out the pharma giant's near-term strategy, with plans to focus on reasonably priced "bolt-on" acquisitions and licensing pacts while pushing five key products which have either just hit the market or are headed to the FDA.
Pfizer became the industry's poster child for megamergers in recent years. But Read made it clear that the days of the big buyout are over. The $50 million Icagen buyout stands out as an ideal fit for Pfizer these days as it shrinks its R&D operations and tailors its clinical research efforts with key strategic contracts struck with Parexel and Icon, according to a report from The Daily Deal.
"We're only going to do bolt-on acquisitions or licensing deals that make sense financially," he told a gathering in San Francisco, according to the AP.
If Icagen represents the ideal buyout for Pfizer in 2012, don't expect the Big Pharma outfit to pay any premiums anytime soon. Pfizer scooped up its partner in pain last summer for what was widely viewed as a bargain basement price, far beneath the price forecast by analysts.
But with Lipitor revenue falling fast as generic competitors muscle in to the market, Pfizer hasn't lost its appetite for big earners. Prevnar 13 and the lung cancer drug Xalkori are expected to add significant revenue, while three experimental meds--the kidney cancer drug axitinib, tofacitinib for rheumatoid arthritis and the anti-clotting treatment Eliquis--show great promise.
- read the story from The Daily Deal
- here's the AP report
Related Articles:
Pfizer R&D pact could inject $217M into Karo Bio
Pfizer targets miniblockbuster prospects as Lipitor patent expires
Pfizer's potential offload of biz units could aid R&D prospects