Word: vasella
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...sunny Friday morning two summers ago, Daniel Vasella got quite a wake-up call. Outside his lakefront home near Zug, Switzerland, gigantic speakers blasted Wagner's Gotterdammerung loud enough to rattle the windows. From across the lake, several boats carrying protesters converged on his house. A helicopter delivered a barrel marked with a skull and crossbones to one of the boats. Baffled, Vasella watched as the barrel was ferried to shore and plunked on his lawn...
Novartis has been flying pretty high lately, despite delays and bad news about a major diabetes drug it hopes to launch next spring. The Swiss drug giant's 2005 income of $6.1 billion on sales of $32.2 billion set a record that CEO Daniel Vasella expects will be broken this year. He spoke with TIME's UNMESH KHER and BILL SAPORITO about vaccines, Democrats and why the firm is wading into China...
Chiron's incompletely recovered operations contributed to a fifth consecutive year of initial vaccine shortages this flu season. But its largest shareholder, Swiss drug firm Novartis, did not dump its stake in the company. Quite the opposite. Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella decided to buy for $5.1 billion the 58% of Chiron that Novartis does not own, and the Federal Trade Commission approved the deal last month. But the California hedge fund ValuAct, which owns 5% of Chiron, has announced that it intends to vote against the deal, calling Novartis' $45 per share offer "tantamount to stealing the company." Vasella, however...
Although Chiron has won a $62.5 million government contract to develop a vaccine against the currently dreaded H5N1 bird flu, which has killed scores of people in Asia, Vasella says the pandemic scare isn't what drove his decision to buy the firm. He points out that there's still a lucrative market for new vaccines against viral and bacterial infections that afflict developed nations, like meningitis and, yes, the flu. "New vaccines for diseases prevalent in developed countries could be priced very differently," he says. And scientific advances, he adds, may soon make it possible to treat a range...
There are other benefits to buying Chiron that Vasella doesn't mention. "One of the reasons that the big pharma companies stay in the business is because it does give you access to the very highest levels of government," says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Geoffrey Porges. "You are perceived as someone who is solving a problem." That's an image any drug company would be happy...