{"id":247218,"date":"2010-01-29T09:39:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T14:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/29\/biogen-idec-genzyme-and-the-struggles-of-big-biotech\/"},"modified":"2010-01-29T09:39:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T14:39:11","slug":"biogen-idec-genzyme-and-the-struggles-of-big-biotech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/247218","title":{"rendered":"Biogen Idec, Genzyme and the Struggles of Big Biotech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biogen Idec has invested heavily in drug research. Genzyme has snapped up smaller companies. Neither approach has worked particularly well, this morning’s WSJ notes<\/a>, and both companies under pressure from activist shareholders to beef up their performance.<\/p>\n

Perennial activist Carl Icahn yesterday gave notice that he intends to nominate three directors to Biogen\u0092s board, following up his success last year in landing two director slots<\/a> on the board. The company it would evaluate the Icahn candidates, according to Reuters<\/a>. Icahn and affiliates hold less than a 6% stake<\/a> in the company, Biogen says. There’s more on the latest Biogen-Icahn faceoff here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Genzyme yesterday announced revised terms for its executive compensation plans<\/a>. The move followed criticism that Genzyme\u0092s old plans were tied to operating income and allowed execs to receive as much as 80% of their bonuses even if the company missed some traditional performance targets, Dow Jones Newswires reports.<\/p>\n

If other measures fail to bolster their performance, major biotechs like Genzyme and Biogen could look to a traditional pharma to open up its pocketbook, the Heard on the Street column says. It mentions Johnson & Johnson as a usual suspect on the potential buyer list, but notes that with J&J and most other pharmaceutical shares trading at modest multiples, “it’s hard for them to justify issuing stock needed to fund large deals.”<\/p>\n

Image: iStockphoto<\/p>\n

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Biogen Idec has invested heavily in drug research. Genzyme has snapped up smaller companies. Neither approach has worked particularly well, this morning’s WSJ notes, and both companies under pressure from activist shareholders to beef up their performance. Perennial activist Carl Icahn yesterday gave notice that he intends to nominate three directors to Biogen\u0092s board, following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247218","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\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}