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From the Editor: It’s All About Timing

Market corrections abound

By: Gil Roth

President, Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association

The Top 20 Pharma Companies and Top 10 Biopharma Companies reports (last month’s issue) comprise a sprawling project, requiring months of research, rigorous analysis, and painstaking layout and design time. As such, a couple of mistakes always sneak into the issue. I’ve run corrections before, but I’d like to take that to a new level this year and, in addition to fixing a typographical error or two, update some after-the-fact errors. I think you’ll figure out which is which.

Top Companies Report Corrections


In the profile for Sanofi-Aventis, a production error led to incorrect numbers being listed for the Pharma Revenues and Total Revenues of that company. The correct numbers for SA, as given in the introduction to the Top 20 Pharma Companies report (page 30 of the July/August issue), are

Pharma Revenues: $34,013

Total Revenues: $35,510

(all numbers in millions of dollars)

Thanks to Troy Smith at Harvard Business School for pointing this one out.

* * *

In the From the Editor page, entitled, “Spinning the Tops,” there was a typo in the Top 20 Pharma: 2001 list. Pfizer’s revenues should have been listed as $22.6 billion, not $23.6 billion.

Thanks to Kamel Biswas at Infosys Technologies for catching that one.

* * *

In the Bristol-Myers Squibb profile, when Kristin Brooks wrote,

“The settlement of the Plavix lawsuit against Apotex lifted a heavy burden from the drug-maker’s shoulders,”

she meant,

“If BMS signs an agreement almost guaranteed to fail before the FTC, the company will have signed away most of its legal recourse to stop a U.S. generic release of its most profitable drug at least five years before its patent would have come due.”

* * *

And in the Sanofi-Aventis profile, when I wrote,

“The company dodged a bullet when it (and partner Bristol-Myers Squibb) forged an agreement with Apotex to hold off a generic of that multi-billion dollar drug till 2011,”

I meant,

“The company took a bullet square in the forehead when it forged an agreement almost guaranteed to fail before the FTC, since the company will have signed away most of its legal recourse to stop a U.S. generic release of its second-most profitable drug at least five years before its patent would have come due.”

Also in that profile, when I wrote,

“SA and BMS are negotiating with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories about a similar Plavix accord,”

I clearly didn’t mean the accord would be too similar to that Apotex one.

* * *

And finally, in the Pfizer profile, when I wrote,

“As Mr. McKinnell said, the company’s been planning for this transition for years,”

I meant,

“The company’s been planning to transition from Mr. McKinnell.”

And in Pfizer’s Key Personnel section, please cross out “Henry A. McKinnell, Jr.” and write in “Jeffrey B. Kindler.”

Thanks,

Gil Roth

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