Showing posts with label GSK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GSK. Show all posts

Friday, November 3, 2017

Johnson and Johnson, Glaxo Smith Kline Accused of Funding Groups With Ties To Islamic Terrorism

dailycaller
Peter HassonAssociate Editor
9:17 PM 11/03/2017
Unfortunately we're going to have to excerpt this one, but the link is there for you. There are embeds to Scribd docs. We don't have the required to access subscription to Scribd, BUT, you can use the magnify function to check through them.

Here's Mr Hasson's opening.

"Major American foundations have given millions of dollars in funding to Islamic organizations accused of having ties to radical Islamist movements or designated terrorist organizations and a group of activists are trying to convince them to stop.

Groups like Islamic Relief Worldwide, which some countries have banned for allegedly funding Hamas and other terrorist organizations, have received millions of dollars from corporate charities like the GE Foundation, community foundations like the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and independent foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. (RELATED: Soros Transfers $18 BILLION To His Open Society Foundations)

Researchers with the Middle East Forum, an activist group devoted to promoting American interests abroad, identified the financial stream from American foundations to seven Islamic groups with radical ties: Islamic Relief Worldwide and its sister organization in the United States — Islamic Relief USA, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and, despite rebounding from highly damaging terrorist allegations in 2008, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The various foundations have given $5.8 million to these seven groups since 2000, IRS filings show, with $5.6 million of that taking place since 2008.

In total, 46 corporate foundations, eight community foundations, nine private foundations and one donor-advised fund have given money to these seven groups.

The MEF researchers tried — with very limited success — to privately persuade every foundation on the list to cease giving money to the seven groups, before sharing their findings exclusively with TheDC. In the interest of transparency, TheDC included the entire list of donations — with accompanying documentation — at the bottom of this article."


Continue reading.

Thank You Mr Hasson and the DC.
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Thursday, January 28, 2016

Big Investor Pushes Underperforming J&J To Step Up Or Split

fiercepharma
January 28, 2016 | By 

 Split 'em up, move 'em out.

Should Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) join the Big Pharma split-up club? One of its major shareholders thinks so, and it's pressing activist investors to join the cause.
Artisan Partners has a short list of suggestions for the healthcare conglomerate, including a three-way split. The firm also urges J&J execs to consider revamping the board, rejigging executive pay and opening up its finances to greater scrutiny.

Right now, J&J is trading at a "significant conglomerate discount," the firm said in a presentation posted online Thursday morning--a $90 billion discount, it figures. The company's already well-defined units would be better off as standalone businesses--consumer products, medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

It's not an original idea; CNBC's Jim Cramer suggested last year that an activist investor might step up and fight for a split. He figured that J&J would be worth 50% more in three pieces than the whole was at the time. "I don't care how big JNJ is, this one's ripe for the prodding," Cramer said.
And Cramer's advice followed pressure from at least one big-name analyst. In mid-2012, as Pfizer ($PFE) was moving into split-up mode, Goldman Sachs' Jami Rubin told investors that J&J chief Alex Gorsky, then fairly new in the job, should consider a three-way breakup. One of her points: The medical devices division was underperforming and dragging down the rest of the company.

Of course, that hasn't changed much; the unit has fallen on such hard times that J&J now says it will restructure the business and lay off 3,000 people.

Artisan has similar arguments. The firm said J&J has significantly underperformed its head-to-head peers in each of its three businesses, and its conglomerate structure drags down its stock compared with those rivals. Even its top-performing business--prescription drugs--isn't on par with Big Pharma.

Why? "[I]nadequate execution and poor operating performance on a number of fronts," Artisan says. Its capital investments--including M&A spending--haven't delivered big enough returns. Also, J&J's executive pay plans are flawed--Artisan says Gorsky is overpaid compared to other, better-performing biopharma CEOS--partly because its financial reports aren't as transparent as they should be.

The firm urged J&J to consider bringing new blood onto its board, saying that there's a "notable lack" of actual industry experience there.

Last year at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Gorsky seemed to hint that J&J was open to hiving off some of its weaker parts. "We think it's important to be very thoughtful about where we're going to participate and where we're not going to participate," he told presentation watchers in San Francisco. "If we're not a No. 1 or No. 2 in a particular area, if we don't see a path to achieving leadership, … then that's maybe better served in someone else's hands."

Still, J&J has long defended its conglomerate structure, almost as sacred at the company as its oft-quoted credo. During Tuesday's earnings call with analysts, Gorsky said the company's "broad-based structure" has helped "deliver strong, consistent and sustainable financial performance."

But that's exactly what the split-up fans dispute. And the diversified structure is falling out of favor across Big Pharma, as companies spin off, sell or swap their lesser-performing units to focus on their strengths.

Pfizer's long-anticipated divorce, which would split its established products business off from its "innovative core" of newer brands and pipeline drugs, is the leading example, though still uncertain, not to mention a couple of years off. But a long list of current deals fits this mold, from Novartis ($NVS) and GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) oncology-for-vaccines swap last year, to Merck & Co.'s ($MRK) consumer health sale to Bayer, to Sanofi's ($SNY) in-the-works trade with Boehringer Ingelheim, which would strengthen the French drugmaker's consumer business and send its animal health unit to Boehringer.

Neil Woodford
Then there's GSK, which is under its own pressure from U.K. investors to break up into several pieces. Top fund manager Neil Woodford has said GSK operates like four different publicly traded companies under one roof, an approach that all but guarantees poor management and hampers the growth in each of them.

Artisan figures that a three-way split at J&J would create up to $90 billion in new value, about one-third of the company's current market cap of $282 billion. That 30% or so increase isn't as much as Cramer calculated. But it might be enough to get some activist investors excited.
- read Artisan's prescription for J&J

Editor's note: This story was updated with details from Artisan's investor presentation.

Thank You Ms Staton and FiercePharma


J&J would create up to $90 billion in new value, about one-third of the company's current market cap of $282 billion.

Uh huh.


Well, the Obama DOJ certainly taught Them a lesson they won't forget.








Wouldn't want Doc nodding off on the job without their coffee. 


Got drugs, real diseases, and premature death to push, . . . and strung out thought criminals to police.

Experts Decry Dangerous Use Of Antipsychotics In Children

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Will GSK's No-Speaker-Fees System Work? Execs Say Yes; Critics: Not So Much

fiercepharma
January 11, 2016 | By 
GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) has taken some bold steps to polish its image, tarnished by a Chinese bribery scandal and $3 billion settlement with the U.S. government. But naysayers blame its first big moves--nixing sales-rep quotas and pegging bonuses to "softer" measures instead--for disappointing roll-outs for several new meds.

Now that it's dropping the time-tested tactic of paying doctors to promote its meds, critics are piling on there, too. But the U.K.-based drugmaker is sticking to its guns, recruiting its own doctors and other experts to tout its meds.

As the Financial Times reports, GSK execs promise that the new policy won't backfire on its drug sales. In fact, the company says its pharma rivals will eventually follow suit.

GSK figures that public opinion is running its way. Some high-profile scandals put a spotlight on the practice a few years ago, and now, pharma companies are reporting enormous numbers of U.S. doctor payments in a public database--$6.5 billion worth in 2014, including research grants, according to ProPublica, which regularly crunches those numbers. Follow-up dives into the database have linked big prescribers with big payments, and media coverage has pushed doctor dollars into the public eye like never before.

GSK CMO Murray Stewart
Society now sees pharma-paid doctors as "hired guns," Glaxo CMO Murray Stewart told the FT. The only way to avoid that rap is for drugmakers to use their own employees instead, he said.

It's a major shift for GSK, which shelled out $15 million in speaking payments to doctors in 2014, little less than it did in 2013. In addition to seminars headlined by internal doctors, the company will be using an increasing number of webcasts to communicate with providers. The company told the FT that about 400,000 medical professionals participated in GSK-hosted webinars last year.

Since GSK first announced its no-payment policy--which went into effect Jan. 1--other Big Pharmas have addressed the question. Will they do the same? Several companies are on record with an unequivocal "No," saying that their doctor-speakers are important to their promotional efforts.

Forbes' John LaMattina, a former R&D chief at Pfizer ($PFE), backs them up; to his mind, respected doctors in the field offer endorsements far more powerful than company staffers--even doctors and medical experts--could provide. Doctors could well assume that a GSK physician has more of a vested interest in a med than would a doctor simply paid to speak about it. Plus, the Open Payments Database makes physician speaking fees transparent, which should give the public peace of mind, he says. "Hopefully the rest of the biopharmaceutical industry will not follow GSK's lead on this topic," LaMattina concludes.

Time will tell whether GSK's new policy will boost its credibility without cutting into revenue. More time will tell whether a buffed-up image would translate into bigger sales. Whether GSK has started an industry trend against pharma-paid physician speakers? The company's head of respiratory meds, Neil Barnes, delivered a parting shot in the FT: "It is going to be like smoking on aeroplanes. People will look back and say 'did we really used to do that?'"
- get the FT article
- see the Forbes column


Thank You Ms Staton and Fierce Pharma.


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Sunday, January 10, 2016

GSK Whistleblower Claims To Have Been Fired After Emailing CEO About Nicoderm Concerns

fiercepharma
January 8, 2016 | By 
GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) Nicoderm products are among the leaders in helping smokers kick their habits. But a former employee says the study that showed their edge over competitors was flawed and that he got the boot for pointing it out to his bosses and giving a heads-up by email to CEOAndrew Witty.

A lawsuit in state court in New Jersey says that Alexandre Selmani had been at GSK as a manager of biostatistics for about 6 years when in 2012 he discovered flaws in studies about Nicoderm patches and lozenges, Bloomberg reports. The suit says he was blown off when he took his concerns to supervisors so sent an email to Witty to warn him that the study problems had "potential health and safety issues for the general public."

The result of blowing the whistle, the suit claims, was that the company cut his pay and bonus for his $134,000-a-year job, and then last year fired him, the news service reports.

In an emailed statement, GSK said today that it has yet to be served with the suit but that it stands "fully behind Nicoderm as a safe and effective form of smoking cessation which continues to help people to quit." It said it goes to great lengths to promote ethics and compliance in the workplace and continually educates employees about how to report complaints "so they can be appropriately investigated."

GSK does not break out Nicoderm sales in the U.S., but it is a dominant player in the nicotine patch biz. In fact, when GSK and Novartis ($NVS) decided in 2014 to combine their consumer health operations, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Novartis to unload its $58-million-a-year Habitrol products to India's Dr. Reddy's Laboratories ($RDY) as a condition of approving the deal. It said that the companies were two of only three companies that sold private-label patches.

On top of the suit, GSK has had a whole different kind of problem with its Nicoderm operations. In 2014, manufacturing issues forced it to recall 335,000 vials of Nicorette Lozenges, leaving ex-smokers, many of them reliant on the lozenges, to hoard their stash and scour eBay for replacements. It took until last year for the U.K.-based company to get the problems fixed and get lozenges back in the hands of retailers.

- read the Bloomberg story

Thank You Mr Palmer and Fierce Pharma.
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Thursday, May 7, 2015

Hampton Steps Into GSK Chairman Role As Discontent With Witty Builds

fiercepharma;
Floundering fortunes, moves by CEO have some talking of management change
May 5, 2015 | By 
GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) new chairman has his work cut out for him. The British drugmaker has sluggish sales in the U.S. and revenue growth that falls behind that of its Big Pharma rivals. It also recently made some moves in its asset swap with Novartis ($NVS) that left some investors scratching their heads.
But all of this has left some industry watchers thinking more change at the top may be necessary, and they've called for the scalp of CEO Andrew Witty.
"Mr. Witty is running out of time," said Stephen Bailey, a fund manager at Liontrust Asset Management Plc in London, which holds Glaxo shares. "He's either got to deliver in the next 12 months or step aside."
Hampton will assume the chairman position Thursday, overseeing Glaxo's reorganization after its multibillion-dollar asset swap with Novartis and reviewing the performance of several of the company's executives, Bloomberg reports. In March, Glaxo closed its deal with Novartis, handing its oncology portfolio to the Swiss drugmaker in return for most of Novartis' vaccines unit and forming a consumer health joint venture. Witty's idea was to move away from heavy reliance on patented drugs that can be hard hit when generics come along, but it has also moved the drugmaker away from oncology, where many competitors are making strides. The CEO has also made cuts in R&D that have raised worries.
"There needs to be some sort of change--whether that's under a new management team or not," Laura Foll, a fund manager at London's Henderson Global Investors, told Bloomberg, adding that at the very least Hampton needs to re-examine the company's strategy. She thinks he needs to be investing in R&D. "Phil Hampton may be able to lead the change from the top."
Hampton, who replaces current chairman Christopher Gent, will also be tasked with revamping Glaxo's board, evaluating senior executives and finding new directors. At least three directors will leave the company in the next 18 months, Bloomberg reports, and investors are putting the heat on CEO Witty to shape up Glaxo or step out.
But the 61-year-old Hampton seems poised for the challenges that lie ahead, bringing a track record of management overhauls to the table. He previously led the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, overseeing about 90,000 job cuts and a partial dismantling of the firm after the U.K.'s biggest bank bailout, Bloomberg notes. And Hampton also took the reins during the turnaround of retailer J Sainsbury, ushering in change through his role as chairman.
Still, the veteran has a lot to do to regain some lost ground. The company is counting on its vaccines business to boost its numbers, contributing 14% of sales as the market continues to expand. And Glaxo is looking to its new respiratory meds to help replace revenue it is losing from blockbuster Advair. It has recently pointed to increased market share for Breo and Anoro and also snagged an FDAnod for Breo in asthma patients, a blessing that could help Glaxo build the share further. 
- read the Bloomberg story
Thank You Ms Wasserman and FiercePharma.
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Sunday, February 22, 2015

Shanghai Official Linked To GSK Bribery Sentenced To 19 Years In Prison

fiercepharma;
February 17, 2015 | By 

The GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) officials accused of orchestrating its $489 million Chinese bribery scandal may have dodged prison sentences in the country, but a Shanghai health official linked to the British pharma won't be so lucky. He'll spend nearly two decades behind bars for accepting pharma company bribes and embezzling more than 4.4 million yuan, China's state news agency says.

 The Shanghai Number One Intermediate People's Court has jailed Huang Fengping, former deputy director for the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, for 19 years, according to a Xinhua report seen by the South China Morning Post. Media reports have tied his case to the GSK scandal, though the Shanghai court made no public mention of the drugmaker.

 Police arrested Fengping back in December 2013, just months after officials accused Glaxo of using travel agencies to funnel bribes to local doctors and healthcare professionals. At the time, investigators found more than 400 envelopes stuffed with cash at Fengping's home--not to mention gold bars and foreign currency in the boot of his car, the SCMP reports.

 Both cases are part of an ongoing country-wide corruption crackdown that has ensnared both foreigners and locals. But compared with Fengping's sentence, Glaxo's punishment looks like a slap on the wrist. Last September, China saddled the company with a $500 million fine, and former China head and Briton Mark Reilly--considered the mastermind behind the bribery scheme--reportedly received a three-year suspended sentence and deportation.

 But while GSK has already publicly apologized and tried to put the matter behind it, other drugmakers could potentially find themselves in the spotlight. In 2013, Chinese authorities visited several of Glaxo's Big Pharma peers and rumors circled that they were investigating a handful of others, including France's Sanofi ($SNY). And while there hasn't been much noise on that front since, China's government has cautioned other foreign companies that if they cross the line, they could be next to face penalties.
"The case is a warning to other multinationals in China that ethics matter," it wrote in a Xinhua editorial last May.

 - get more from the SCMP

 Special Report: Top 10 drugmakers in emerging markets - GSK | Top 10 pharma companies by 2013 revenue - GlaxoSmithKline
Related Articles:
GSK China scandal resolved with $500M fine and suspended jail sentence
Xinhua: Multinationals, beware--or end up like Glaxo
Top GSK exec faces life in Chinese prison for alleged 'massive bribery network'
Glaxo trims CEO Witty's bonus in face of China probe
GlaxoSmithKline exec admits 'breaches,' promises price cuts in China

 Thank You Ms Helfland and FiercePharma
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Thursday, September 4, 2014

GSK: Paxil/Seroxat Unpublished Trials Reveal Little Benefit For Depression or Anxiety: New Study

madinamerica;


August 30, 2014

Upon reviewing all of GlaxoSmithKline’s data from both published and unpublished trials of the antidepressant paroxetine, researchers found the drug provided almost no benefits over placebo for either depression or anxiety, according to a study in PLOS One.
The Wayne State University researchers, in collaboration with Harvard’s Irving Kirsch, stated that evaluating the efficacy of antidepressant medications on depression and anxiety has until now been hampered by a lack of access to pharmaceutical companies’ unpublished trials. “Here, for the first time, we assess the efficacy of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) in the treatment of both anxiety and depression, using a complete data set of all published and unpublished trials sponsored by the manufacturer.”
They found that the published literature tended to overestimate the efficacy of the drug, and overall the drug provided tiny benefits of only 2-3 points on common rating scales for depression and anxiety — much of which was due to placebo effects. “The available empirical evidence indicates that paroxetine provides only a modest advantage over placebo in treatment of anxiety and depression,” they wrote. “We demonstrated that individuals given placebo exhibited 79% of the magnitude of change compared to paroxetine.”
“These findings have important clinical implications,” the researchers commented. “The obvious alternative for the treatment of both anxiety and depression is psychotherapy intervention. However, direct comparisons of acute phase treatment for pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy in the treatment of major depression generally have yielded no significant differences between the treatment modalities. Fewer clinical trials have directly compared antidepressants and psychotherapy in the treatment of anxiety disorders, although the available literature indicates similar comparability between antidepressants and psychotherapy.”
The Efficacy of Paroxetine and Placebo in Treating Anxiety and Depression: A Meta-Analysis of Change on the Hamilton Rating Scales (Sugarman, Michael A. et al. PLOS One. August 27, 2014. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0106337)


Thank You Mr. Wipond and MIA.
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