Richard Clark

Survey: Pharma not a good info source

Tracy Staton — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:35:00 -0400

Remember last month when Merck CEO Dick Clark remarked on Big Pharma's "trust deficit?" Well, here's quantitative evidence of it. A European Commission study found that healthcare professionals and payers are "mostly suspicious" of drugmakers as sources of information about drugs. Nearly half of the responders said pharma has too many conflicts of interest to be appropriate sources of general information on medications.

Some of the responses, however, indicated that if drug companies provided a clear distinction between ads and information, they could be valuable repositories because of their intimate knowledge of their products.

The opinions will be factored into decisions about a proposed code of conduct governing the release of info about pharmaceuticals in the E.U.

- see the item at Pharmalot
- check out the PharmaTimes story

Merck's Richard Clark - CEO Pay

Tracy Staton — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:50:45 -0400

Richard Clark - Merck

Total Compensation: $14.5M

2007 Revenue: $24.2B
2006 Revenue: $22.6B
Change: 7%

Details: 2007 was a great year for Merck, with the company making significant progress on the five year turnaround plan enacted after the Vioxx scandal. The company's good fortunes led to an 80 percent hike in compensation for CEO Richard Clark. It included $1.62 million in base pay, 37 percent more than 2006 levels, and $8.23 million in stock and options grants. In addition, Clark got $4.31 million in incentive pay, plus about $360,000 worth of miscellaneous items like retirement-plan matching funds ($10,125), a home security system ($51,024), and commuting costs ($18,686).

Merck News:
Merck chief got 80% pay hike
Analysts cheer signs of turnaround at Merck
Merck touts reorganization effort
Fortune scolds Merck for "risky" programs
Merck presents pipeline update to analysts

Merck CEO: 'I can't blame the media'

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:59:57 -0400

A triad of Merck news today, including one item about the news. We'll start with that: CEO Dick Clark (photo) worried publicly about the media at a Morgan Stanley conference yesterday. In response to a question about the negative bent to Merck coverage these days, Clark said Merck and Big Pharma as a whole need to "do a better job...I don't think we're aggressive enough in getting our stories out there." He also used his new buzz-phrase "trust deficit" to describe the cloud hanging over the industry. Pressed, he said, "I can't blame the media. I have to blame us."

That's quite a turnabout for Clark, who blamed "media hype" for misleading folks to an unfairly negative view of Vytorin, the combo cholesterol drug that delivered disappointing results in the now-infamous Enhance study.

Meanwhile, the company and FDA have agreed on a labeling update to RotaTeq, the infant vaccine to prevent rotavirus infection. The new label will include the report of one vaccinated infant's death from a bowel obstruction. Back in February 2007 the FDA warned that 28 infants developed intussusception after taking RotaTeq, but the rate of that condition didn't exceed what's commonly seen among un-vaccinated babies. Merck reiterated that conclusion in announcing the labeling change.

And finally, Merck is giving Vioxx users more time to cough up documents that show they took Vioxx and then had a heart attack or stroke. The new deadline is June 30, instead of May 1.

- see the item in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog
- check out the vaccine news at MarketWatch
- find the Vioxx update in the Daily Record

Fissures in Merck, Schering relationship?

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Are fault lines in the Merck/Schering-Plough joint venture beginning to open up? Market-watchers are reading the earnings-call transcripts--and the tea leaves--and finding evidence of "the diverging interests of Merck... and its partner."

Part of the problem is that Merck depends less on Vytorin revenues than Schering does. Merck was perfectly willing to admit that it expects a $700 million hit on Vytorin this year, but Schering danced around that prospect like a fire-walker. "We really have no model" for figuring out how much Zetia and Vytorin sales might drop, Schering CEO Fred Hassan told analysts during his earnings call yesterday. A big company like Schering, with plenty of financial types at its disposal? Color the pundits skeptical

Plus, as Forbes points out, Merck is hoping to launch a new heart med this year, Cordaptive, a tweaked form of niacin that could be an add-on to statins--just as Schering's Zetia is. Imagine patients taking Merck's Zocor--one half of Vytorin--along with Cordaptive instead of Zocor-plus-Zetia, otherwise known as, yes, Vytorin. Why would Merck mind that? Schering, on the other hand, would mind it quite a bit.

The "trouble in Merck/Schering-Plough land" chatter must have some traction, because Merck CEO Richard Clark (photo) addressed it in a Star-Ledger interview published today. The fallout from the controversial Enhance study "won't result in any changes" to the partnership, the Star-Ledger reports. "The joint venture is well-managed," Clark said. "This was an unfortunate outcome."

- see the Forbes article
- check out the item at BNET's pharma blog
- read the Star-Ledger piece

Pharma CEOs mull industry "trust deficit'

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

We love it when pharma CEOs depart from their usual talking points about financial results and restructurings and pipelines, to wax philosophical on their place in the word. This week, we heard an entire trio musing on the state of the industry: Merck chief Richard Clark, GlaxoSmithKline's putative chief Andrew Witty (photo), and Pfizer's Jeff Kindler (photo). Some choice bits:

Pharma's equilibrium is "shattered," Witty told the Academy of Medical Sciences this week. To fix it, drug makers need to listen more--and talk more--particularly with drug buyers (about the true value of new meds) and with government. Pharma and regulators are "like two ships missing in the night," he said.
"There is a trust deficit we have to fix," Merck's Clark told The Star Ledger, when asked about lessons learned from the Vytorin controversy. "I think everyone has a lesson to be learned from this. Drug makers "may have to become more transparent" about their spending and their relationships with docs, he said.
"There's a lot of public concern about the pharmaceutical industry," Kindler told the Wall Street Journal. "But...everybody recognizes that you can't solve the healthcare reform problem without an innovative, healthy pharmaceutical industry. We have to be a part of the solution." He went on to talk about truth-telling: "It's important for the industry to communicate with integrity and to do everything it can do to insure the integrity of the data and the science."

Sounds like these guys are all picking up on the same vibe: communication, transparency, telling the truth. And that they recognize that the "shattered equilibrium" and "truth deficit" need to be fixed. What will they do to make that happen, that's the question.

- check out the Witty story in the Financial Times
- see the Clark interview in the Star-Ledger
- read Pharmalot's take on Clark's remarks
- read the WSJ's Q&A with Kindler

Related Article:
Say goodbye to Big Pharma's gilded age

Vytorin news buried in Merck report

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Read deep into Merck's first-quarter earnings report and you'll find some Vytorin secrets spilled. First off, the company expects to lose some $700 million in revenues off the blockbuster cholesterol drug, which has been dropping off, scrips-wise, since the big Enhance announcement in January (you remember all that news). This is the first time we've seen a real number applied to the potential sales slide. That figure might help a savvy prognosticator ballpark lost sales at Schering-Plough, which reports its earnings tomorrow; Schering is Merck's partner on Vytorin, a combo of Merck's Zocor statin and Schering's cholesterol-lowering Zetia pill.

Second, New Jersey's attorney general has issued subpoenas to Merck and Schering-Plough, probing the Enhance study, which found that Vytorin did no better at treating artery-clogging than Zocor did alone. The study results, remember, were delayed for some two years while the companies and their researchers wrangled with the data. New Jersey joins a queue of states and feds looking into that delay and the marketing of the expensive drug in the meantime. New York and Connecticut are investigating, as are two Congressional committees.

Meanwhile, another Enhance-related lawsuit has hit the courts--and this one is a civil suit filed under RICO, alleging racketeering-type fraud. Interestingly, this suit uses the e-mailed comments of Dr. James Stein, who hit the news last week when his criticism of some "meeting minutes" was released by one of the Congressional committees investigating the whole affair. The suit also includes letters and statements by Sen. Chuck Grassley, who's leading the charge for that committee.

- check out Pharmalot's New Jersey AG news
- see the RICO lawsuit
- view the CNBC video of CEO Richard Clark on Merck's Vytorin numbers

ALSO: Merck CEO Richard Clark says he's "aggressively looking" for the right biotech deal, but declined to identify any targets. He's said the same before, however, so there's no indication that anything is imminent. Report