What would you do?

Easier said than done, of course. But always fun to speculate. So that’s what one trade mag did by putting the question to a variety of industry folk. Here’s what Ken Carter, ceo of Avalon Pharmaceuticals, suggests;

Resist Shareholder Pressure

“One of the things I’ve seen pretty consistently over the last 10-15 years is that pipelines seem to be driven by short-term vision. That view leads to things like mergers and acquisitions in the hopes that the combined pipeline will be stronger than the individual pipelines. The problem is that the combined R&D capabilities aren’t any better. On top of that, once these mergers occur, it takes between one and two years to integrate the early-stage discovery functions.

If I were running Pfizer—or a top-five pharmaceutical company—I’d resist the shareholder pressure to try to address my near-term pipeline issues and instead try to create a more realistic strategy for a 10-year plan to generate medium-stage pipeline products by emphasizing internal R&D.”

Laudable, but how exactly? Ken, with all due respect, you’ve been running a much smaller enterprise for the past seven years. No one is doubting your insights or expertise, but Wall Street is unforgiving. Fill us in, please. Jeff Kindler isn’t the only one who could use a few tips.

Further reading….
Pharmaceutical Executive;
The Avalon Pharma site.

[tags]Avalon Pharmaceuticals, Ken Carter, Pfizer[/tags]