Pharmaceutical Executive-08-01-2001

In an era in which companies can forfeit $1 million each day they delay a product launch-and being second can mean failure-pharma executives are under pressure to make risk and opportunity decisions in less time than ever.

London-GlaxoSmithKline is proposing to cut more than 2,000 jobs from its worldwide workforce of 100,000 as it seeks to generate the promised savings from its merger.

Brussels-Lack of intellectual property protection is not causing the erosion of European pharma, reports the European Generics Association.

While making small talk at a party, a new acquaintance asked a senior pharmaceutical executive what line of business he was in. "I work for a multinational pharmaceutical company," he replied.

Pharma mergers have hardly brought runaway success. Yet, judging from industry CEOs' public pronouncements, on the horizon is another merger and acquisition wave that will challenge both participants and spectators. The M&A game of the future may diverge drastically from strategies of the past, as multiple acquirers begin to target specific therapeutic franchises rather than whole companies.

Early e-health enthusiasts envisioned a rapid technology and information metamorphosis that could only be described as a quantum leap. In the aftermath of the dot-com shake out, pharma companies reported e-initiative progress that more accurately resembles a shuffle-with an occasional stumble. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young surveyed more than 100 senior managers from 42 pharma companies, including the top 10, to assess the current state of all things "e." The results are mixed.

That marketing should begin early in product development has become a truism in the pharma industry. But as a statement on its own, it sheds little light. What does it mean to begin? At what point do marketers insert themselves into the process? To what end do they enter where once only scientists trod? And, the ultimate question—which the truism fails to answer—how might their intrusion affect the lives of patients, in trial or thereafter?