Valeant and Pharmacy More Intertwined Than Thought [WSJ]
As bad as last week was for Valeant, the company is not off to a good start with this article published by the Journal last night:
Interviews with former employees, doctors who prescribe Valeant drugs and patients indicate that the ties between Valeant and Philidor are more interconnected than previously disclosed. The people gave details of how the companies worked together, with Valeant employees working directly in Philidor offices, sometimes using fictional names. The people said this was to conceal the ties so it didn’t appear Valeant was using the pharmacy to steer patients to the drug company’s products, which Philidor strongly denied.
Some of those fictional names include Peter Parker, Jack Reacher and Brian Wilson. Yet, a Philidor spokeswoman told the Journal that “real identities were well known to the other Philidor employees.”
Roddy Boyd published a follow-up article yesterday as well, writing that "Philidor is almost certainly one of the most important parts of Valeant's business."
And of course, the call that Valeant held this morning has resulted in a flurry of Twitter activity. Here's a sampling:
'Philidor is not material to Valeant,' says Valeant. $VRX pic.twitter.com/aeVPaQtjRM
— Julia La Roche (@SallyPancakes) October 26, 2015
@John_Hempton And the only statement is Philidor is that they deny this allegation – which is easy to prove.
— John_Hempton (@John_Hempton) October 26, 2015
This is the person who worked on the $VRX deck until 4 am this morning. SVP of IR. pic.twitter.com/PdsFE7O2WX
— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) October 26, 2015
Collectively, this is what a real bad case of the Mondays looks like.
RSM's Gauntlet [RSM]
Here's a video from RSM to help celebrate their new initials:
Dramatic music! Stunts! Sexy-voiced narrator! This name change may be for keeps.
What Do You Do After Taking Facebook Public? [WSJ]
If you're David Ebersman, you become a CEO of startup called Lyra Health. And he says, yes, it's quite a bit different than his old job:
As CFO at a larger company, one of the things I felt responsible for doing was to be a bit of a pessimist: to think about what could go wrong with the investments we were making, and to make sure someone was challenging every dollar we were spending in the business.
I think the CEO needs to think about those things, but also needs to be relentlessly optimistic. You really want an optimism and confidence to flow from the CEO and to infect the organization in a positive way.
Also, he walks to work and assembles his own IKEA conference tables. So that's different, too.
In other news:
- Uber is raising more money. [DealBook]
- The Post-it Notes insider trader settled. [SEC]
- Most people start their day by checking email. [BI]
- Joe Kristan uploaded a message that an IRS scammer left him. [Tax Update]
- Washington's haul from pot taxes could be big. [Bloomberg]