The Industry Veteran has been busy this summer, but luckily for those missing his unique view of the pharma world, he’s ba-ack. And in his purview this time is the whole issue of why Big Pharma is filling its top jobs with lawyers.
DICK: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
CADE: Is not this a lamentable thing, that the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
Shakespeare, King Henry VI, part II: IV, ii
Late last week (July 26) Merck announced the promotion of corporate counsel Kenneth Frazier to succeed Peter Loescher as president, global human health, effectively making him the company’s chief operating officer. Given Pfizer’s earlier decision to make their corporate counsel, Jeffrey Kindler, the CEO there, Frazier’s promotion means two Big Pharma companies within the past year have elevated lawyers to key, strategic positions. The moves in both cases indicate the unwillingness of the respective companies to cleanly break from the unsavory and dysfunctional practices of their recent past.
By naming Kindler to the top spot, Pfizer’s board clearly desired a relatively inexperienced manager without settled attitudes toward the pharmaceutical industry. As CEO it seemed apparent that he would move slowly and rely upon practiced hands within the company for guidance. Kindler immediately acknowledged this when he promoted his rival for the CEO spot, CFO David Shedlarz, and publicly referred to him as his "right hand." Such thinking among board members appears mystifying because if any pharmaceutical company requires fundamental changes to the economic model by which it conducts business, it is Pfizer. Since the 1990s Pfizer led the industry in implementing the blockbuster, mega-company approach. Under William Steere, an agile and precise thinker, the company grew and prospered with the strategy. In the hands of his successor, the arrogant head of finance, Hank McKinnell, Pfizer’s capitalization declined by more than 30% while the rest of the industry ignorantly followed his long walk down a short pier.
Kindler’s claim to fame as corporate counsel consisted of his use of outside contractors to pursue foreign Viagra counterfeiters and harass them into ceasing their operations. While serving as Pfizer’s legal counsel Kindler hired the former number-three man at the FBI to direct corporate security and together they retained companies such as the Blackwater Group, one of the largest US contractor in Iraq. Blackwater, which maintains close ties with right wing religious groups in the US, performs the usual range of corporate security and sleuthing services. It is also a mercenary army for hire that makes abundant use of stealth surveillance technology.
One example of Kindler’s failure to break with the blockbuster/mega-company approach appears in his dealings with third-party payers.
