Word: mullen
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...James Mullen and the biotechnology industry arrived on the scene together by chance in 1980. That year he landed his first job out of college, as a chemical engineer for what is now the U.K.-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...
...Mullen's vision didn't immediately play well with biotech investors, many of whom prefer the promise of blowout growth to steady profits. Shares of both companies dropped sharply. Who needs another giant drug company pumping out me-too pills, focusing on stuff it already makes and pinching pennies to deliver a steady income? Biotech's allure since the benchmark Genentech IPO 23 years ago has been its promise to deliver wonder drugs that will cure feared ailments like cancer and Alzheimer's. Yet with an exhaustingly long list of failed products and failed companies in its brief past...
...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...
...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