Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Pharma is part of The Game, it is the time of The Gathering

"It's better to burn out than fade away!"
Revealing comment from Dr. Manhattan over at In the Pipeline (emphasis mine):
"One big reason why some analysts are all for the deal is one reason why AstraZeneca might not be. In a word? Synergies. Pfizer sees big opportunities for cost cuts; ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum ballparks that expectation at 25%." 
Having been present for 2 of Big PFE's acquisitions, the "synergies" all come out of shutting sites and firing staff. True synergy would be to keep the bulk of the R&D that made the company attractive in the first place. Instead Ann Arbor & Kalamazoo were shuttered. 
What happens to all of the pharmaceutical analysts when there is only one company left standing (Pfizer) after acquiring everyone else? That's the direction it is heading, as this will be Big Merger #4 for PFE. After flogging these kinds of value destroying acquisitions (in the sense of drug R&D), but making a bundle of cash off of them, it would be ironic if there were no further need for analysts, since there is only One Company. Incorporated in the UK…or maybe Russia if they can get a better tax deal.
Pfizer's insistence on purchasing AstraZeneca makes sense now! It's all a part of some sort of weird Gathering of the pharma companies, where There Can Be Only One at the end. Who knows what The Prize will be?* **

*For those who are not obsessed with The Eighties and its lousy-but-good movies, here is the context of this very weird post. 

**Actually, it's super-easy to figure out what this is about -- it's money (in the form of tax avoidance). Not science, just money. That it will ultimately end up destroying a bunch of pharma research jobs is besides the point. Depressing.

11 comments:

  1. One ringleader to doom them all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Robot Chicken did a Highlander parody (in season two) using Lindsey Lohan and several other "starlets" at the time. Of course, the sketch ended with Lohan won and then promptly blew up the entire planet. Somehow I think this is more applicable to Pfizer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL Schoenebaum, that guy is a clown and the perfect example of everything that's wrong with Wall Street. Guy has 0 experience working in biopharma but gets paid (I assume at least) $500K to offer his meaningless analysis that similarly inexperienced, but highly paid, buysiders read and sometimes believe.

    I guarantee Schoeny just pulled this # out of his ass and adjusted some BS model back before applying an equally made up discount rate (accurate to 2 decimal places, though!).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Faceless shareholder 1, everyone else 0. Long live the price fixing, research control and viagra

    ReplyDelete
  5. So much for earning the respect of future employees, as per Pfizer's recent press releases which spammed LinkedIn. I think AstraZenecans, future Pfizerites, are not respecting Pfizer right now as it proceeds with its hostile takeover.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Where's Patrick Stewart (a.k.a. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard) when you need him?

    "We are the Pfi-Borg. Your pipelines and some of your employees will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be adapted to service us. Resistance is futile!"

    ReplyDelete
  7. An establishment in which pharmacy (in the first sense) is practiced is called a pharmacy, chemist's or drugstore. buy modvigil

    ReplyDelete
  8. Why dont governments set up a "scientist army"? War on disease, cheap drugs, cut down healthcare costs and reset pharma to actually serve mankind instead of random investors who could really give a shit about anything other than their next diamond back scratcher

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In principle that is an appealing idea. I work in academia and I see all of the faculty who have gone to seed--in their 50's, no longer get grants, are down right lazy and they smell. I'm afraid a government scientist army would be wasteful and dysfunctional, unless it had strong oversight.

      Delete
  9. It just shows you that curing " disease" is nothing if you can give a 70 yr old a boner with pill

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20