A legendary CEO did something unimaginable by today's standards, and it tells you everything about how America has changed
Allergan / Dan Bobkoff / Mike Nudelman / Business Insider
The American corporation has been transformed by globalization and new technology. But equally powerful is the belief that on Wall Street and in boardrooms the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits for shareholders. Starting this week, Business Insider teams up with public radio's "Marketplace." Our series, "The Price of Profits," tells the story of how this idea changed the US and our lives.
There's a new way of doing business for most of Big Pharma.
Instead of relying on their own expensive laboratories, they buy drugs or their makers, and focus on getting treatments through the FDA and onto your TV screens. Then, they raise prices every year, move overseas for tax advantages and reward shareholders by buying back billions worth of shares.
But it wasn't always like that.
'Medicine is for the people. It is not for profits.'
Time
At Merck & Co., in the middle of the 20th century, the idea that patients came before profits, "was a big part of our culture," said Scott Lucas, who worked in sales at the company for more than 30 years, starting in the 1970s.
Lucas and other workers describe an era of the highest ethical and moral standards. Drug trials were halted over the most tenuous rumor that a similar drug in development by a competitor was running into issues. Sales staff took pains to educate doctors about the downsides of Merck's treatments.
In the second half of the 20th century, Merck really was a company where shareholder value was the result, not a prime motivation.
It ran huge, productive research labs full of topnotch scientists. In charge of those labs was Roy Vagelos- who went from chief scientist to become CEO in 1984.
"My interest was never making money," Roy Vagelos, 86, said in an interview with Business Insider and Marketplace. "Even as CEO. Especially as CEO."
By today's standards of management, it's like Vagelos did everything wrong.
Dan Bobkoff / Business Insider
He refused to raise drug prices more than inflation. When he told that to Merck's marketing team, Vagelos said, "They said 'we're leaving money on the table, of course.' And I said, 'Ffne, that's what we'll do.'"
'I even refused to meet with stock analysts.'
"I never worried about stockholders ever. It never crossed my mind. I even refused to meet with stock analysts."
That's unimaginable by today's standards.
At one point, he made a last minute decision to donate a massive quantity of a drug that cured river blindness in patients in Africa. It cost the company a lot of money.
"One of the people - when I was reporting it - at the next board meeting said 'you never called us!' And I said it was going so fast, it never crossed my mind. I forgot about it."
You could be cynical about this. You could argue holding down drug prices helped stave off regulations, and there were a lot of PR benefits to that donation in Africa.
But by not focusing on maximizing shareholder value, Merck did really well. During the Vagelos era, Merck came out with lots of new drugs, which led Merck's stock price to increase an average of 22% per year. In the years since, it has been just 5% a year.
Andy Kiersz / Business Insider
But these days, it's just about impossible to run a company the way Vagelos ran Merck.
"You have to provide a little bit of something for everybody," said Brent Saunders, the CEO of Allergan. You might know it as the maker of Botox. Allergan is highly respected by Wall Street and its competitors, but Saunders can't ignore investors.
"You need to have good short-term performance. You have to have sound mid-term strategy and performance, and ultimately, because of the product cycle and the way we innovate over the long term, really have conviction around your long-term strategy," he said in an interview with Business Insider and Marketplace. "I try to do it all."
'I try to do it all.'
In many ways, Allergan is the model modern pharmaceutical company.
It more often acquires drugs or companies, rather than go through the risky process of discovering and developing drugs from scratch, as companies like Merck did in its heyday.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
"Their success is really based on a drug ... [where] the market opportunities are endless," said Oner Tulum, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. "It's like milking a cow."
Saunders calls Botox, "a pipeline in a product."
And Saunders can't ignore his share price, especially now that he has one of the most famous activist investors taking a big stake in Allergan: Carl Icahn.
"I view Carl as just one of many important shareholders," Saunders said. "We listen to all of our shareholders, activist and passive and long term and short term."
Icahn is leaving Saunders alone for now, but that could change. He has a history of pressuring companies to make moves and then getting out of the stock.
Inversion
To save on taxes, Allergan is technically an Irish company, even though Saunders mostly works in New Jersey. It caused a little tension between Saunders and his father when Pfizer tried to buy Allergan to take advantage of the tax deal.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Saunders says that being based in Ireland allows Allergan to use the savings to invest more in the US.
Then, there's prices: Allergan says it raises prices roughly eight percent a year - far greater than inflation, but also nothing like a Valeant, the drug company that has been the focus of investigations in to price hikes.
But for all the ways Allergan is an example of the new way pharmaceutical companies operate today, Saunders sometimes sounds a bit like Dr. Vagelos.
"When we do well for patients, when we come up with innovation for an unmet need, when we can improve a patient's life by one of our treatments, our shareholders benefit," he said.
What's new is old again
Today, Merck and other big pharma companies look more like Allergan. Their own research teams haven't been so productive lately, so they increasingly buy up drugs and their makers.
The old established companies are spending billions buying back their own shares.
After Roy Vagelos retired from Merck, he made a fortune as chairman of the biotech firm Regeneron. What does he think of newer firms and their business models?
"Well, I don't think much of them," he said. "The biopharmaceutical business is different than selling buttons and bicycles."
Wall Street, though, might not agree.
"The Price of Profits," our series with Marketplace, looks at what happens when profits become a company's product. For more, visit priceofprofits.org.
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