Bristol-Myers Squibb

Bristol-Myers Squibb (), colloquially referred to as BMS, is a pharmaceutical corporation, formed by a 1989 merger between pharmaceutical companies Bristol-Myers Company and Squibb Corporation. Its Chairman and CEO is Peter R. Dolan, and it is headquartered in New York City. Its primary R&D sites are located in New Jersey and Connecticut, with other sites around the US, in Ireland and in other countries.

BMS is on the Forbes 500 list and is one of the Top 10 companies for working mothers according to Working Mother Media.

Products

Bristol-Myers Squibb manufactures prescription pharmaceuticals, Over-the-Counter drugs and health care products in several therapeutic areas. It is also the parent company of Mead Johnson which manufactures nutritional products such as Enfamil baby formulas and infant vitamin supplements like Tri-Vi-Sol.

Spokesman

Lance Armstrong has appeared in several of the company's marketing campaigns, as a survivor of testicular cancer that was treated with BMS medication.

Pharmaceuticals

The following is a list of key pharmaceutical products as found on the Bristol-Myers Squibb "At A Glance" information page, retrieved 2005-03-28. The terms used below are all registered trademarks of the company.

Taxol

At one time, BMS held the solitary contract to harvest the bark of endangered yew trees on United States territory for the manufacture of chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (Taxol®). Current paclitaxel production comes from renewable sources. BMS also held the original paclitaxel license, but there are now multiple generic producers.

Scandals and allegations

The company was involved in an accounting scandal in 2002 that resulted in a significant restatement of revenues from 1999-2001. The restatement was the result of an improper booking of sales related to "channel stuffing", or the practice of offering excess inventory to customers in order to reflect higher sales numbers. The company has since settled with the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission related to this scandal, agreeing to pay $150 million but neither admitting nor denying guilt.SEC News Digest, August 9, 2004.

According to an FTC consent order filed in 2003,News Release about Consent Order against Bristol-Myers, March 7, 2003 the company

engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts over the past decade to obstruct the entry of low-price generic competition for three of Bristol's widely-used pharmaceutical products: two anti-cancer drugs, Taxol and Platinol, and the anti-anxiety agent BuSpar. ^* Bristol avoided competition by abusing federal regulations in order to block generic entry; deceived the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to obtain unwarranted patent protection; paid a would-be generic rival over $70 million not to bring any competing products to market; and filed baseless patent infringement lawsuits to deter entry by generics.

The company has also been sued in this matter by state attorney generals to recover monetary damages.

Jim Lynchehaun, a ConvaTec ex-employee (ConvaTec is a division of BMS), claims the policy the company adopted in dealing with whistleblowers came from the top. He made what he thought were protected disclosures to the HR manager at Deeside, UK. He was surreptitiously approached by a London barrister who specializes in cases of fraud. Lynchehaun believes the barrister was acting on the instructions of FBI special agent, Thomas J Pickard. The barrister's Internet firm passed the disclosures on to the HR director at Deeside. Lynchehaun discussed the disclosures with the HR director and VP (factory manager) at Deeside. After leaving employment he wrote to Sandra Holleran, the BMS Corporate Ombudsman; John L McGoldrick, the BMS General Counsel and Peter R Dolan, the BMS Chairman and CEO, to complain about obstruction of justice and the actions of Thomas J Pickard, who had by then joined BMS reporting to John L McGoldrick. Pickard eventually reported to Peter R Dolan as well as John L McGoldrick. Around the time the complaint relates to, Pickard was in charge of investigating the East Coast Anthrax mailings and the 9/11 attacks. Lynchehaun has had no adequate response to his complaints.

References to a possible acquisition by European companies in the media

An article in The Star-Ledger from February 26th, 2006,Bristol may be in Euro-pharma's cross hairs, The Star Ledger, February 26, 2006 claims the company is being looked at for acquisition by European drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis. All three are at least twice as large as BMS. BMS had held merger talks with GlaxoSmithKline back in 2002, but a deal never materialized.

References

External links

Bristol-Myers Squibb official site

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