Word: biogenic
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...based pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline; at about the same time in San Francisco, Genentech, the pioneering biotech firm, sold its first shares to the public. Now Mullen, 44, and the biotech industry are coming of age together - only this time it's no accident. As the ceo of Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mullen is helping force the issue with his proposal last month to merge his company with IDEC Pharmaceuticals in a $7 billion deal that would create the world's third largest biotech firm. The idea, says Mullen, is to "bring business discipline to science and medicine." In other words...
...chemical engineer for what is now GlaxoSmithKline, and at about the same time the pioneering biotech firm Genentech sold its first shares to the public. Now Mullen, 44, and the biotech industry are coming of age together--only this time it's no accident. As the CEO of Biogen, Mullen is helping force the issue with his proposal last week to merge his company with IDEC Pharmaceuticals in a $7 billion deal that would create the world's third largest biotech firm. The idea, says Mullen, is to "bring business discipline to science and medicine." In other words, he wants...
Mullen's focus on diverse products, production synergies and profitability at the proposed Biogen IDEC, where he would be CEO, is already part of the culture at top industry players Amgen and Genentech. So he's got a blueprint--and a lot to work with. Biogen's Avonex for multiple sclerosis and IDEC's Rituxan for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma each generate more than $1 billion in annual sales, and both companies are solidly profitable. Yet "the combination will create more value than either could as separate entities," says William Rastetter, CEO of IDEC, who would get the title...
That's certainly Mullen's plan. He gave up ambitions of being a medical doctor in college, then quit the pill business at Glaxo to get in on "the hot emerging business" at Biogen in 1989. Now he hopes to be remembered as the CEO who hurried business sense to the industry "without snuffing out innovation." He's a nuts-and-bolts guy who came up on the operations side, not as a scientist. His big coups at Biogen were beefing up manufacturing capacity and creating the industry's most extensive sales force. So he's well suited...
...outside a mutual fund or without diversifying across at least five companies. Given the sharp run-up this year, Weisbrod's hedge fund has cut its biotech holdings a third, and six top executives at Genentech recently sold $36 million of the stock. The relatively stodgy feel of the Biogen-IDEC deal has still other growth investors running for the hills. It's all part of growing up--and part of Mullen's plan. --With reporting by Eric Roston/Washington and Unmesh Kher and Barbara Kiviat/New York