Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Fred Hassan's Hindquarters: Meet Peter Rost's Boot

Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan gets served (link contains adult language) by Peter Rost. Badly. While Hassan has been hailed as some sort of genius by some in past years, Rost offers a take on his record that is much less flattering. Here's Rost's lead-in to the story:
In this article BrandweekNRX will take you behind the glossy numbers and show you what really happened during Hassan’s tenure as CEO of two major drug companies and how he managed to fool almost everyone into thinking he had created successful turn-arounds.
Gee, Peter, that's not very nice. Then again, neither is this:
And that’s not all--there is also evidence that a significant part of Pharmacia sales were based upon selling drugs to its wholesalers ahead of demand, “stuffing the channels,” resulting in revenue of $500 million from such sales.
It just gets even more intriguing from there. I've not posted on the Schering-Plough sinking ship until now, but I've been watching the story, which just keeps looking worse for the company. I thank Rost for keeping a close eye on this saga and look forward to reading more about it at Brandweek.