Amneal co-founders return to run company; Drug industry urges Canada to act on US drug import plan | 10 August, 2019

This week, Phispers has news from Canada, where its drug lobby group has urged the government to take bold steps like banning drug exports so that there is no impact of America’s plans to import drugs from Canada on its citizens.

Meanwhile, the co-founders of Amneal — Chirag and Chintu Patel — have returned to the company as its co-CEOs in order to better manage the headwinds in the generic industry.

In Asia, Philippines says it is considering re-introducing Sanofi’s controversial dengue vaccine — Dengvaxia, while China is planning to introduce more measures to control drug prices.

Akorn has reached an agreement to settle a shareholder lawsuit over data integrity concerns that led to Fresenius exiting the merger deal.

In India, the former Ranbaxy promoters got raided, Sun Pharma shuttered two R&D units and a study questioned the quality of diabetes combo pills being sold in the country.

In a major boardroom shake up, Amneal Pharmaceuticals announced that its co-founders — Chirag Patel and Chintu Patel — have been named co-chief executive officers, with immediate effect. Paul Meister, who held various positions at Thermo Fisher, has been appointed to the board of directors as chairman. Additionally, Paul Bisaro (executive chairman) and Rob Stewart (president and CEO) have also resigned and stepped down from the board.

In a press release, the company acknowledged that the “recent industry headwinds and increased competition continue to put pressure on the company”.

“In order to succeed in today’s environment, Amneal must move decisively and prioritize its key strategic initiatives that will drive value for our shareholders. Chirag and Chintu possess both the leadership skills and the requisite strategic, operational, manufacturing and R&D expertise to execute on these efforts,” the statement said.

Last month, Amneal was forced to reduce its 2019 profit guidance. In its recent second quarter results, the firm attributed the decline in revenue and gross margins to “greater than expected” effects of additional competition on key generic products and to ongoing pressure on base generics business from the limited number of buyers.

In 2017, Amneal had merged with Impax with the intention to combat pricing pressure being faced by generic drug manufacturers. The all-stock Impax-Amneal deal created the fifth-largest generics player in the US. The value of the deal was estimated at US$ 6.4 billion.

(Source PharmaCompass)