Bill Wells, the drugmaker’s new ceo, may excel at cutting costs, but it remains to be seen whether he can boost sales and a flagging stock price. “I think he’ll strip the company down to its bare bones and act very much like a private-equity firm,” David Lickrish, an analyst at Broadpoint Capital, tells The National Post. “But that doesn’t address the broader issue of developing Biovail’s drug pipeline.”

Canada’s biggest publicly traded drugmaker yesterday named Wells, the cfo of the Loblaw supermarket chain, to next month replace Doug Squires, who will become chairman. Wells has been a Biovail director since 2005, but spent most of his career in the food industry, including being “actively involved” in the reorganization of Loblaw and holding senior positions at McDonald’s.

Wells tells the paper he expects Biovail will keep paying a dividend to shareholders, but the drugmaker needs to shrink costs to keep them in line with falling revenues, which may include cutting staff and closing some manufacturing facilities. “Everything is on the table,” he tells the Post.

His appointment comes as Biovail founder Eugene Melnyk fights to unseat the board, claiming the organization is poorly managed. Regulatory probes into Biovail’s accounting during Melnyk’s tenure have forced Biovail, which makes the anti-depressant Wellbutrin XL and hypertension drug Cardizem LA, to spend “extraordinary” amounts on legal fees, Well tells the paper. A dollar figure will be disclosed next month.

Last month, Canadian and U.S. securities regulators accused Melnyk and three others - Brian Crombie, Biovail’s former CFO; Kenneth Howling, the current CFO, and controller John Miszuk - of engineering a scheme to deceive investors about financial results.

Hat tip to Pharmagossip