David Sell
Princeton, N.J. - Merck & Co., chief executive officer Ken Frazier told The Inquirer that the drugmaker's facility in the Philadelphia suburb of West Point, Montgomery County, is in no danger of being closed now.
Merck is among the many pharmaceutical companies that have announced in recent months plans to close or consolidate facilities in hopes of squeezing more efficiency out of their operations to increase profits or decrease losses. Some, but not all, of those decisions involved laying off employees.
Is West Point safe?
David Sell
The Inquirer's architecture critic, Inga Saffron, toured and reviewed GlaxoSmithKline's new building at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
A link to Inga's story in Friday's Inquirer is here.
The drugmaker's Center City employees have moved from their previous location at Franklin Plaza to the new facility.
David Sell
Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies continued to shed jobs in March and the rest of the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest employment report released Thursday morning by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Challenger defines and tracks 28 different sectors, with "healthcare/products" and "pharmaceuticals" being separate sectors. Government jobs are also a separate category, and some of those involve healthcare.
The healthcare sector had the third highest number of job cuts through the first three months of 2013, with 11,713 people leaving jobs versus 6,880 in the same period of 2012. The only two sectors with higher job losses were the financial and retail sectors. In shorter term, 6,349 people lost healthcare jobs in March versus 2,754 in February. The report said companies in March announced plans to hire 1588 people.
David Sell
Nathan Every works for a West Coast private equity firm and lives in Seattle, but his latest deal announced this week brought him home to Philadelphia, at least figuratively.
Every is a general partner with Frazier Healthcare, which is leading a group of private equity firms that formed a separate entity to buy AndersonBrecon, the pharmaceutical packaging subsidiary of AmerisourceBergen.
One of the big three U.S. drug wholesalers, AmerisourceBergen is getting $308 million for the unit. AmerisourceBergen is headquartered in Chesterbrook. A link to Wednesday's Inquirer story is here.
David Sell
Drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen said Tuesday it reached a deal to sell its AndersonBrecon contract packaging subsidiary for $308 million to a group created to make the purchase and led by Frazier Healthcare.
AmerisourceBergen, whose headquarters is in Chesterbrook, had said in November it planned to divest this business.
“This transaction will help ensure that AndersonBrecon will continue to thrive in the years ahead, and allows AmerisourceBergen to focus on its distribution, specialty and manufacturer services businesses,” Steven H. Collis, AmerisourceBergen chief executive officer, said in a statement.
David Sell
The reaction to Novartis being denied a patent for one of its cancer drugs by India's Supreme Court prompted widely different reactions from key groups.
Patient groups and India's generic manufacturers, which form a $26 billion industry in supplying drugs to much of the under-developed world, were happy.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the non-profit organization which serves some of the world's poorest people in very challenging situations, was also quite happy.
David Sell
PolyMedix, Inc., a small biotech company in Radnor, Pa., filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In January, PolyMedix replaced then-chief executive officer Nicholas Landekic with chief financial officer Edward F. Smith as interim CEO. Smith resigned Monday, according to the SEC filing.
A company spokeswoman did not return a call or e-mail requesting comment. With its most advanced drug only in stage two (of three) clinical trials, according to the firm’s website, product revenue was uncertain and far in the future.
David Sell
Drugmaker Novartis lost a patent case decided by India's Supreme Court that rippled through the business and pharmaceutical worlds on Monday.
The Associated Press story from New Delhi is here:
By Nirmala George
David Sell
PhillyPharma is on furlough this week. We're planning to rejoin the conversation during the week of April 1 (no kidding).
Be well.
David Sell
AstraZeneca, which had two announcements this week about staff cuts, also tried to spread a little pharmaceutical sunshine with an investor day in New York.
"There were no major surprises or sudden solutions – which we weren't expecting anyway – suggesting a long, slow crawl out from beneath a host of past problems," Bernstein Research analyst Tim Anderson wrote in a note to clients. "Many of the proposed solutions appear reasonable (and in-line with expectations) yet some of them will probably be viewed by investors with a measure of caution and skepticism.
"On balance, we continue to think AZN is likely "at the bottom" and that the dividend is safe (current yield ~6%). This makes it tempting given low investor expectations and AZN's low relative valuation. The downside is that the stock stays at the bottom for a prolonged period because solutions like these generally play out only slowly, and that investors only earn their ~6% during this period of gradual rebuilding. Furthermore, earnings will very likely continue to go down for a number of years before they go up again."
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