The 25 most influential people in biopharma in 2012

Taken from pharma industry leading publication Fierce Biotech, Feb 7, 2012

This is a link going back to 2012, when the Biotech bubble was beginning to catch the eyes of investors. A few days ago, I shared #1 on the listing:

Who is Sir Andrew Witty And Why It Is Crucial to Know

This is the comment on Sir Andrew Witty in the publication:

The 25 most influential people in biopharma today

The anatomy of influence

“On Tuesday, GlaxoSmithKline's Andrew Witty kept two promises he had made to investors and the pharma industry. GSK completed its three-year review of its drug development units, triggering a shake-up as the pharma giant reapportioned its €3.7 billion budget to back its most successful groups. And the company boosted its return on investment for late-stage development work, pushing the rate from 11% to 12% as Witty aims at the 14% mark.

Those numbers--which will be studied by every CEO in the industry--reflect what makes Witty one of the most influential players in the biopharma business. He's one of our 25 picks this year, our first look at the movers and shakers around the globe who are pioneering new ideas and pushing for progress in one of the slowest, least productive industries the world has ever seen.”

So, the point to take from this? Witty and GSK were driving the entire biotech industry to make a much greater level of profits, otherwise survival would be in jeopardy. The link at the top expands on Witty’s proclamations.

Next, picked out by yours truly, is Novartis’ Joe Jimenez. This is him joining the Board of US conglomerate P&G:

Joseph Jimenez, (Lead Director)
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Aditum Bio; Former Chief Executive Officer of Novartis AG

“Mr. Jimenez is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Aditum Bio (biotech venture fund). He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Novartis AG (global healthcare), a position he held from 2010 to 2018.

Prior to this role, he held several senior positions at Novartis from 2007 to 2010, including Division Head, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and leadership of the company’s Consumer Health Division. Mr. Jimenez was an Advisor to the Blackstone Group L.P. from 2006 to 2007.

He also held various leadership roles at H. J. Heinz Company (packaged food) in Europe and North America from 1999 to 2006, including Executive Vice President, President, and CEO of Heinz Europe from 2002 to 2006 and President and CEO of H.J. Heinz Company North America from 1999 to 2002. Mr. Jimenez also held several leadership positions at ConAgra Foods (packaged food) from 1993 to 1998.”

This is what it says:

Joseph Jimenez - The 25 most influential people in biopharma today

A reputation for disciplined spending

Joseph Jimenez
CEO
Novartis

There's one adjective few would apply to the pharmaceuticals business: disciplined. Big Pharma has a reputation, fair or not, for sprawl and overspending. Even the cost cutting that major drugmakers have engaged in over the past several years has come in enormous waves, with layoffs announced several thousand at a time. Nitty-gritty, detail-oriented execution, if found anywhere, is in the lab and the biopharma manufacturing plant, not administration, and certain not in marketing.

That's one reason why Novartis ($NVS) chief Joe Jimenez has attracted so much attention since he took over the Swiss drugmaker's pharma business in 2007. He started applying standard business metrics to pharma cash flow, purchasing and competitive bidding, confident that his experience in consumer goods could change help Novartis' operations for the better.

Jimenez became CEO in 2010--and the subject of umpteen executive Q&A's and profiles. He is known to be an ex-competitive swimmer, with an athlete's day-to-day dedication. His cost-cutting moves, focused mostly on marketing and administration, have come steadily, with more than a billion cut in 2010, and even more than that in 2011. Job cuts have been steady, with a few hundred here, a thousand there; just last month the company announced another 2,000 cuts to the U.S. marketing operations. The aim: Cutting spending where it's excessive ("We have spent too much money on marketing and selling our drugs," Jimenez has said) and deploying it where it's most necessary (R&D). Manufacturing efficiency is also in Jimenez's sights; only half of the company's 83 factories were being used at full capacity before the company announced some plant cutbacks last fall.

Then there's the competitor's need for speed. Early in his tenure as CEO, Jimenez said he'd noticed how slowly the industry moved. Novartis staffers tended to spend too much time on internal debate. "Decisions were not being made decisively and quickly," he told The Financial Times. "I made it a priority to speed up decision-making and change our business model to get closer to patients and customers," he said at the time. One way to do it, he said, was the "key account management" approach, which in pharma means building better relationships with payers.

Whether it's Jimenez's influence or simply an idea whose time has come, borrowing metrics and processes from other industries is becoming something of a fad in pharma. GlaxoSmithKline announced a partnership with the racing business McLaren; one of its goals is speeding up decision-making. AstraZeneca is looking to gain "lean manufacturing" know-how from Jaguar Land Rover.

Meanwhile, Jimenez has been trying to emphasize R&D, a function that's quite different in pharma. The efficiencies he's trying to create elsewhere are designed to help feed an R&D budget "at the high end of the industry," he says. Recently, he said he's looking for 58 regulatory filings and launches over the next 5 years, among them "next-generation" targeted drugs. "We remain focused on our mission of matching the right patient with the right treatment," he said.

Then this in 2017:

Patient advocate David Mitchell speaks on Novartis’

“Novartis “shattered oncology norms” by setting the price for the one-time infusion of tisagenlecleucel at $475,000. The company has stated that it will charge only for patients who respond after the first month of treatment, which would be a little more than 80 percent of those receiving the treatment if the results of clinical trials prove generalizable. Importantly, this price “is just the ‘tip of the iceberg,’” and most patients receiving tisagenlecleucel will require supplementary care such as hospitalization and possible concomitant intravenous infusion of the anti-IL-6-receptor tocilizumab, which is estimated to cost an additional $500,000.”

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