{"id":175466,"date":"2010-01-13T09:39:40","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/13\/sanofi-aventis-ceo-on-pharmas-lost-decade\/"},"modified":"2010-01-13T09:39:40","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:39:40","slug":"sanofi-aventis-ceo-on-pharma%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98lost-decade%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/175466","title":{"rendered":"Sanofi-Aventis CEO on Pharma\u2019s \u2018Lost Decade\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Viehbacher\"Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, spoke yesterday<\/a> at that big drug-industry meeting<\/a> in San Francisco. He described pharma’s “lost decade” of the past 10 years — for many companies, he said, share prices fell despite double-digit earnings growth.<\/p>\n

The familiar culprit: The patent cliff, and the looming revenue hits coming when big drugs like Plavix (which Sanofi co-markets with Bristol-Myers Squibb) face generic competition. And the familiar solution: to “move away from .. this boom-bust cycle that has really frustrated so many of us over the last 10 years.”<\/p>\n

For Sanofi, growth of the vaccines business (which Viehbacher called “the best business you can be in”) is a key part of that diversification. The company’s recent agreement to buy Chattem will also allow it to make a big push into the U.S. over-the-counter drug business with its allergy drug Allegra<\/a>. And Sanofi, which sells insulin under the Lantus brand, may also expand its diabetes business by selling services and devices, Viehbacher said.<\/p>\n

He added that the company’s R&D holds the greatest possibility for upside surprises in the next few years — because “for the most part people have zero expectations of Sanofi-Aventis research and development,” he said. “We’ve basically cleared out a lot of bad news, and if anything comes along it should be good news.”<\/p>\n

Photo: Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

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Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, spoke yesterday at that big drug-industry meeting in San Francisco. He described pharma’s “lost decade” of the past 10 years — for many companies, he said, share prices fell despite double-digit earnings growth. The familiar culprit: The patent cliff, and the looming revenue hits coming when big drugs like Plavix […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}