How is this for a boast? “It’s hard to compare us with other companies. Since in some respects, there’s not even anyone to compare us with. There is no company like Teva, nor will there be another company on the planet that will produce drugs in the quantities we will in a few years time, or that it will have a generic R&D operation the size of Teva’s.”

Would you say Shlomo Yanai is confident? The former major general in the Israel Defense Forces is finishing his first year as ceo of Teva Pharmaceuticals, the big generic drugmaker, and in an interview with Globes, the Israeli business newspaper, Yanai deflects speculation about Teva execs who are coming and going, and his ability to lead in the corporate world. Of course, if the questions weren’t so breathless…

Globes: People often talk about the secret of Teva’s success. Have you, as someone who came from the outside, managed to crack it?
Yanai: “Maybe. It’s a combination of several things. Firstly, Teva is outstanding in that it has a long-term strategy, in the real sense of the word, and not in the way it is bandied about all the time. The second thing is that it has a practical attitude. This does not mean there’s no internal criticism. There certainly is. Go out into the yard and take a look, there’s no shortage of gossip in Teva either, but everything is businesslike. The third thing is that there are some fantastic people here, and the fourth thing is modesty. We’re not ascetics and we haven’t made an ideology out of it. We don’t get up in the morning and pour a bit of sand on ourselves to make us feel humble, but look around - we don’t have swank offices, the modesty impacts on all our decision making. We have not let ourselves become dazzled, and the sense of pride is in the right place.”

You can read the rest here…