Results of the heated proxy battle that pitted Eugene’s hand-picked slate against the drugmaker’s current management will not be released until the annual meeting on Wednesday, but sources tell The Globe and Mail that he was unable to win enough votes to replace the board with his own nominees.

Melnyk, who holds about 12 per cent of Biovail shares, had nominated 10 directors, including former ceo Bruce Brydon, and conducted an aggressive proxy campaign, with large newspaper ads and a slick web site promoting the group, the paper notes. He also accused Biovail’s currrent management of having a bloated bureaucracy and called its restructuring proposal “absolute pharmaceutical suicide.”

To win over shareholders, Melnyk promised to bring an “entrepreneurial spirit” to Biovail, sell generic versions of “difficult-to-manufacture” drugs, and move into a category of high-margin specialty drugs that are sometimes sold directly by docs to their patients, the paper writes.

For its part, Biovail accused Eugene of trying to “turn back the clock” by placing his hand-picked nominees on the board, and pointed out that much of the expensive litigation Biovail has had to deal with over the past few years originated when Melnyk was in control.

The Securities and Exchange Commission accused the drugmaker and several former and current senior execs with engaging in fraudulent accounting schemes and making misstatements to analysts and investors. The execs facing charges are Melnyk; former cfo Brian Crombie; the current controller, John Miszuk; and current cfo Ken Howling. Biovail settled the charges and paid a $10 million penalty.

Melnyk is expected to hold a news conference in Toronto at noon Wednesday, after the end of the Biovail annual meeting, the paper adds. In February, Melnyk said he was considering a number of options in addition to a board coup, including selling his shares or organizing a buyout of the stock he doesn’t own, to take Biovail private.