Pfizer’s Jeff Kindler On Corporate Trust
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 7th, 2009 // 9:02 am
Last week, Pfizer chief executive Jeff Kindler addressed the Boston College Chief Executives’ Club and discussed ethics breaches before a luncheon gathering of some 250 people. The talk came three months after the big drugmaker agreed to pay $2.5 billion fine for off-label marketing of various drugs.
Interestingly, Kindler noted a recent survey found two-thirds of Americans have less trust in corporations than a year ago. “If we fail to change, the future will not be pretty – for business or for society as a whole,” he told the crowd. “People have had enough, and the backlash is real.”
What he didn’t mention is that Pfizer agreed to the recent settlement for infractions that took place while previous agreements (see here) concerning such behavior were already in place with the federal government. And who was Pfizer’s general counsel at that time? Kindler.
James Love
Jeff Kindler has been quite effective in buying influence among Democrat lawmakers these days. USTR seems to be eating out of his hand, and so does the Senate Finance committee.
Lisa Van Syckel
Kindlers speaks with forked tongue, yes? I also wonder if he places himself at the top of the list of those who cant be trusted?
Condor
Irony — irony — that’s for me — I R O N Y!!!
Namaste
Justice in MI
JK has been on this theme for a few weeks. A statement a couple of weeks in the UK was somewhat more forthcoming. While he didn’t dwell on the details, he certainly did refer to the recent Pfizer busts. He added (I quote loosely) something to the effect of Pfizer employees “not recognizing themselves” in the behavior fined.
He also put the issue of trust in pharma in the context of corporate malfeasance more generally, and hedged on the question of how much the current distrust is a response to reality and how much it is not.
(In fairness, it is probably, indeed, complex. Nonetheless, a little more candor would not have been impossible.)
talbot
There’s a great old phrase–a fish stinks from the head.
ol cranky
Let’s see how things fall out from the acquisition of Wyeth. . . what are the odds that Pfizer has learned from it’s previous mistakes and aren’t just jerking current employees and contractors around? If there’s anything that we can say about corporate America it’s that it has gone out of its way to prove it can’t be trusted.