David Sell
Apple chief executive Tim Cook spent two hours before a Senate committee Tuesday defending how the computer device maker uses subsidiaries to shelter billions of dollars in cash offshore to avoid paying taxes.
Pharmaceutical companies, including the biggest multi-nationals such as Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson, use similar tactics. That was particularly evident Monday, when drugmaker Actavis announced it would spend $5 billion in stock to buy Warner Chilcutt, Plc.
Actavis bought Warner Chilcutt in part because it is "domiciled" or registered in Ireland which has low corporate taxes. (Ireland has other economic problems, but we'll leave that for others today.) But the main offices of both companies are in North Jersey and Actavis will continue to operate from Parsippany.
David Sell
You think you got money problems?
Get in line.
Gary Gibbons graduated from, and worked at, very fancy schools and medical facilities, but he understands that some folks in America face different challenges because the places they live in are challenging. It doesn't relieve anyone of personal responsibility, but there are different challenges.
David Sell
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey says he spends a lot of time pushing for funding of the National Institutes of Health because it translates into jobs in Philadelphia and other parts of this region.
"There is bipartisan consensus, less so on financial levels, but we're not as far apart as we are on other issues," Casey said in a meeting Friday with Inquirer reporters and editors. "I focus on [NIH funding] for a couple reasons. No. 1 is because this region of the country has made great progress but also there is no region more at risk than Southeastern Pennsylvania because of the dollars the state gets."
A Scranton Democrat, Casey said breakthroughs in medical and life sciences research happened in Philadelphia and the surrounding area because of expertise, but also because NIH funding helps pay for the expertise.
David Sell
Ranbaxy Laboratories, Ltd., is an India-based pharmaceutical company with a U.S. subsidiary, Ranbaxy USA Inc., headquartered in Parsippany, N.J.
Ranbaxy provided another example this week that drug companies the world over are sometimes willing to skirt rules and laws, while ignoring public and patient safety.
The Justice Department said Monday that it had reached the largest drug safety settlement to date with a generic drug manufacturer. Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500 million and plead guilty to criminal charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of certain drugs made at two of Ranbaxy’s facilities in India. The Justice Department statement is here.
David Sell
Movie star Angelina Jolie's revelation Tuesday of having had a double mastectomy to help avoid breast cancer had business and legal angles.
Myriad Genetics, the Utah-based company at the center of a legal debate about the acceptability of gene patenting, has a monopoly on the testing Jolie had before opting for surgery. With the news of Jolie breaking in the morning, the company's stock rose to a three-year high of $34.70 during trading on the NASDAQ market on Tuesday. The trading volume was also much higher, with 2.6 million shares exchanged, more than double the three-month daily average of 1.1 million shares.
Jolie explained her decision in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, a link to which is here.
David Sell
Indiana farmer Vaughn Hugh Bowman got shut out at the Supreme Court and some of the cheering from the stands was the biotech industry.
A soybean farmer from Indiana, Bowman took on a giant in the industrialized agriculture world, Monsanto, and lost badly. All nine justices ruled in favor of Monsanto. The case was Bowman v. Monsanto et al., and a link to the opinion is here.
The court will decide several cases this spring that involve patent law and drug companies. Still to come is a decision on human gene patenting and whether generic and brand-name companies violated antitrust laws in settling litigation about patent infringement.
David Sell
Malvern-based Endo Health Solutions will be a stock to watch Monday when the stock market opens because of Friday evening's news that the FDA had rejected the company's request to stop generic competitors to Endo's Opana ER opioid painkiller.
The FDA announcement came after the trading closed Friday. But word of the pending announcement leaked out enough that trading was halted Friday before the market closed.
David Sell
A New York federal judge on Friday gave the go-ahead for women of any age to buy over-the-counter, morning-after oral contraceptives. Plan B is made by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which is based in Israel but has its Americas headquarters in North Wales, Montgomery County. There are also generic versions.
The Associated Press story is below:
By Larry Neumeister
David Sell
In a stinging rebuke that will cause financial pain, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Friday rejected Malvern-based Endo Health Solutions' request that the agency deny approval to generic versions of its opioid painkiller Opana ER.
Last year, Endo took the unusual step of asking the agency in a citizens petition to withdraw approval of its own drug on safety grounds. Overdose deaths from opioid painkillers now exceed those by cocaine or heroin. Besides swallowing too many pills, abusers crush, liquefy, inject and smoke the drug to get high.
Endo sought approval of a new form of the drug that Endo said was tamper resistant and wanted generics blocked from entering the market. But the FDA dismissed Endo's suggestion that its request was made on safety grounds, viewing it as a way to deter generic competitors.
David Sell
Justin Forsyth changed his mind about GlaxoSmithKline.
Forsyth is the chief executive officer of Save the Children, which announced a five-year, $23 million agreement with GSK to work on improving health care and vaccination in the developing world. One aim is to combat basic-but-deadly problems such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition for children.
"I used to protest against GSK and campaign against GSK," Forsyth said during a conference call with reporters on from Nairobi. "That was years ago before Andrew Witty took over and it was because the high prices that they were charging for HIV medicine."
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