Pfizer Merging With Wyeth
Pfizer, already the Mr. Big of Big Pharma, think it isn’t big enough and want’s to swallow — er, merge — with another Big Pharma company, Wyeth to the tune of $68 billion dollars. Even if merger plans ultimately fall through, Pfizer’s stock is rising.
Bad News For Consumers
Mergers are not necessarily a good idea in the pharmeceutical biz. I know folks who worked in Smith-Kline Beecham and are still reeling from their merger in 2000 with Glaxo-Wellcome to become the mutant power now known as GlaxoSmithKlien. A merger did not drive down the proce of any of it’s products and many peope lost their jobs. However, the CEO at the time, JP Garnier, who was already filthy rich at the time, could probably pay of the US deficit now.
The only thing that happens in these mergers is that the upper management gets richer and the company itself becomes more powerful politically, getting huge breaks in taxes and environmental standards. Hopefully, the US government will not allow the merger (although recent news makes that look really doubtful). If they merge, they’ll be like…well, like Disney World, which is it’s own autonoumous entity within Florida.
What’s Pfizer, Again?
Pfizer has offices in many countries, but is originally an American company, starting in 1849 in Brooklyn by two immigrant cousins, one of which was named Charles Pfizer. Their first big medicaine was to kill parasitical worms. We need some of that today in Big Pharma to kill off these greedy CEOs.
Pfizer’s top drugs are Viagra, Lipitor and Zoloft. They also make the migraine drug Relpax.
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