Word: vasella
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...Greenpeace to protest an old industrial dump near Basel that was said to be leaking chemical waste into the groundwater. The barrel carried water from a source by the dump in which, protesters said, they had found traces of drugs made by Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant that Vasella leads as chairman...
...Vasella could have summoned the police. Instead, he stepped outside and asked the crowd, "Who's the boss here?" A man stepped forward, and Vasella told him the commotion was scaring his two younger children. Vasella invited the protest leader and two of his companions for breakfast on his terrace to talk things over. Vasella's wife Anne-Laurence served croissants to the rest of the group...
...vintage Vasella: cool-headed, personable, direct--adjectives that frequently crop up in descriptions of the drug executive. Vasella is exceptionally smooth in dealing with advocates for lower pharmaceutical prices as well as with regulators and lawmakers, whether in his native Switzerland or in the U.S., where he is embarked on a major expansion. He is fluent in German, French and English and says he can muddle through in Italian and Spanish. More important, he is fluent in many cultures, from the elaborate rituals of Japanese business to an American culture that is at once informal and legalistic. Despite his modest...
...credit rating of AAA from Moody's. Morningstar analyst Todd Lebor praises the company's "excellent financial disclosure and conservative accounting" and notes that it has no unconsolidated debt. Pfizer's announcement last week that it will merge with Pharmacia sent several drugmakers looking for partners. But while Vasella doesn't rule out an acquisition, his firm is considered one of the few strong enough to succeed on their...
...Vasella knows, though, that he can't insulate Novartis from the rising public rebellion against drug prices. According to the advocacy group Families USA, prices of such branded drugs as Novartis' Miacalcin and AstraZeneca's Prilosec have grown at twice the rate of inflation, even as government controls have kept the same prescriptions much cheaper in most other countries. Patients in the U.S.--who account for roughly half the drug industry's annual global revenues of $364 billion--are howling, and they are getting heard in Congress. But so is Vasella, who employs 19,000 Americans and recently opened...