In retrospect, would you say the acquisition of Sirtus for $720 Million was reasonabl

Re: In retrospect, would you say the acquisition of Sirtus for $720 Million was reaso

Does not border on criminal - it is criminal. MS has long history of 'sweet heart' deals.

Throwing GSK money at external products (gepirone) run by his cronies or so to be cronies.

It's easy to make lots of new friends when you throw 100 million dollar deals on the table.

MS has mastered the #1 rule of business: Other People's Money.

 

Ah, the good old days of Sirtris.... sigh

 

http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/gsk-buys-sirtris-for-720m/2008-04-23

 

Sounds good to me !

 

Moncef is an average scientist in vaccines at best but was an incredible self promoter that through boot licking, was made head of Business Development. He then convinced his friend, JP Garnier the new GSK CEO, to slot him into the role of CSO. Moncef then convinced the Board that in-licensing compounds should be the priority over in-house discovery/development. Perhaps he had a point since the productivity of R&D in Philadelphia was poor which continues to this day. However this was not the case with former Glaxo sites (London, RTP), having provided to the newly formed GSK the vast majority of compounds that would later gain FDA approval and for which Moncef and Patrick would take credit.

Patrick seems to be a good man while Moncef …… The real problem with both of them is their lack of good decision making: 1) Sirtris (a $750 million bust, 2) Darapladib and the purchase of Human Genome Sciences ($3 billion bust), 3) DPU model (far, far less productive, CEDD model brought forward multiple compounds that led to approvals), 4) GSK China which brought shame to GSK regarding their integrity on GSK science AND business (where are all of the discoveries? Neurodegenerative diseases is one of the hottest areas in research, why put this into a completely new R&D unit separated from the main R&D hubs?)

And combine those two R&D leaders with an inexperienced CEO and you have the situation we have at hand. GSK cannot also continue to use almost all of their net revenue to pay a ridiculously high dividend. I see two ways out of this mess: 1) GSK should put itself up for sale or 2) Part A – Cut the dividend and invest more into R&D and Part B – Bring in science and business leaders with a PROVEN track record in the Pharmaceutical Industry (and not the academic star of the month that takes 5 years to understand drug discovery and development) and terminate the employment of Moncef and keep Patrick where his experience in Clinical Pharmacology can benefit the company.

GSK now has a star in Sir Philip Hampton as Chair of the Board. He needs to take the wheel from AW and force changes in the R&D Leadership.

 

Moncef’s along with GSK’s overall strategy should be considered in light of his terrible leadership when head of all of R&D. He is speaking the company line, but it’s missing any introspection or honesty about the performance of management, including himself and Witty, in the past 8 to 10 years. During this time there were very bad investments of large sums, poor internal decisions of staffing and projects selected to progress into Phase 3, and multiple reorganizations leading to the current structure that is simply unable to discover new entities due to the lack of focus in that area, and such smothering environment. Many of the best discovery scientists have left or have been forced out in the many restructurings (another underway as we speak).

 

Amazing

 

Amazing

 

Wow, very sad.