- For years the planet's premier poisoner, Monsanto, ego
driven and destroyed by debt, tried to peddle itself off to stronger firms
with sane, profitable management. American Home Products asked for
Monsanto's hand in marriage, but when announcements went out activists
worldwide emailed them with warnings: You're marrying the plague!
- Next week AHP declared they needed to know more about
their partner before they danced, and dropped the acquisition. Finally
a deal was struck with Pharmacia Upjohn, but first Monsanto had to sell
G. D. Searle and its NutraSweet/Equal business to eliminate the liability
baggage. At least Monsanto could hide its losses in the balance sheet
of a larger, profitable international company.
- The honeymoon must have been a disaster, for now PU's
Monsanto operation is being spun off to stockholders as separate shares.
Call it a divorce! Shareholders will receive shares of isolated Monsanto
plus shares in Pfizer, the international giant which is acquiring PU for
60 Billion.
- Poor Monsanto is alone again, a tired divorcee with no
place to hide its losses. So the words of Mohammad Ali are fulfilled:
THEY CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE. To which we add the immortal admonition
of another great black athlete, baseball's Satchel Paige:
- Never look back, something might be gaining on you!
- PS: It's us!
- Read on for the news release below. Remember while
all this is going on, Neotame, a more potent aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful,Canderel)
has been approved. FDA would not approve it for years so Monsanto sold
the rights to Child's in Boston. FDA knows Aspartame Disease has
been declared a global plague and there is a new medical text, Aspartame
Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.aspartameispoison.com or www.sunsentpress.com
or 1 800 814 - 9800.
- This act by the FDA after being saturated by complaints
from consumers for 20 years on aspartame goes down in the history books
as showing that the FDA has absolutely no concern at all for consumer health
or safe food and drugs, but as Ed Horton, Editor of the prestigious Lancet
wrote in May a year ago: "FDA takes money from industry and
endangers the lives of the people." Whoever approved it should
be immediately removed. Information will be put on www.dorway.com
on how to object and ask for a hearing. Everyone in this country
needs to get involved. Aspartame Disease may end up being one of
the largest plagues in world history. It's synergistic effect with
Neotame is just continued mass poisoning of the public. I have just
returned from speaking with representatives of the European Union, and
asking for the ban of aspartame. A Citizens Petition has also been
filed with the FDA who has disregarded every effort for 20 years
showing not only have they committed the heinous crime of approving a deadly
chemical poison for human consumption but saturated with complaints, and
after three congressional hearings they want to poison the public even
more.
- Betty Martini, Founder
- Mission Possible International
- 9270 River Club Parkway
- Duluth, Georgia 30097
- 770 242-2599
- www.dorway.com
-
-
- New York Times article below
- Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 12:31:43 -0400
- To: (Recipient list suppressed)
- From: "John T. Linnell" <admin@aspartame.ca>
- Subject: Monsanto getting yet another new owner
- New York Times 15 July 2002
- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/15/business/15DRUG.html?todaysheadlines</
FONT>
-
- Pfizer Said to Buy Large Drug Rival in $60
Billion Deal
- By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
- The drug giant Pfizer Inc. has agreed to acquire the
Pharmacia Corporation for $60 billion in stock, making it by far the most
dominant drug maker in the world, according to executives close to the
deal.
-
- The transaction, which was approved yesterday by the
boards of both companies and is expected to be announced today, these executives
said, would be the largest of the many recent mergers in what remains a
troubled and fragmented industry.
-
- Drug companies, under intense pressure from politicians,
employers and managed care companies to limit price increases, are having
a hard time finding breakthrough products that would assure the robust
earnings growth investors demand. Pfizer's acquisition of Pharmacia, resulting
in a company that would still control only 11 percent of the global market,
is likely to hasten the industry's continued consolidation.
- The merger would create a behemoth with $48 billion in
projected sales and many of the nation's most widely used drugs. Pfizer
" which already owns Zoloft, the antidepressant; Lipitor, the nation's
most widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug; and Viagra " would
also gain control of Pharmacia's Celebrex and Bextra, two high-selling
arthritis drugs, and Detrol, a drug that treats bladder problems.
-
- Pharmacia, formerly Pharmacia & Upjohn, is also the
maker of the Nicorette gum smokers use to help them quit, the Rogaine baldness
treatment and Luden's throat drops.
-
- Executives close to the deal said that by creating economies
of scale, the merger would help Pfizer to limit price increases. Pfizer
is already being conservative about raising its prices, they say, noting
that it has increased its price for Lipitor only modestly since acquiring
it in the 2000 acquisition of Warner-Lambert.
-
- Pfizer's headquarters would remain in Midtown Manhattan.
Pharmacia is based in Peapack, N.J. It is unclear how many of the combined
company's 150,000 employees would be let go.
-
- Pharmacia recently completed the purchase of AT&T's
former headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J. It is unclear what would happen
to its plans to relocate 2,500 employees there.
-
- The Pharmacia acquisition would lengthen Pfizer's lead
as the largest drug maker in the United States and would vault it to the
top spot in Europe, Japan and Latin America.
-
- Pfizer's proposed acquisition requires approval by regulators
in both the United States and Europe. Pfizer currently has about 8 percent
of the global market, while GlaxoSmith- Kline, the second-largest drug
company, controls 7.3 percent.
-
- Analysts and investors have long speculated that many
pharmaceutical companies would be engulfed in a rash of mergers, leaving
only a handful of gigantic survivors. But so far, the largest expected
mergers have not materialized, analysts said, because the companies and
investors have questioned the long-term benefits.
-
- Pfizer's deal could pressure rivals like GlaxoSmithKline,
which has been struggling to discover enough new drugs to make up for those
now losing their patent protection, to make acquisitions simply to remain
competitive.
-
- GlaxoSmithKline's chief financial officer, John Coombe,
said last month that his company had been eyeing Bristol-Myers Squibb,
itself plagued by problems.
-
- Pfizer's proposed acquisition of >Pharmacia would
help sustain its growth, the executives contend, because 11 of its 12 combined
blockbuster drugs will be protected by patents through 2010. Its pipeline
of drugs in late stages of development would be expanded with several promising
Pharmacia drugs, including eplerenone, a new category of treatment for
cardiovascular diseases; parecaxib, an injectable athritis treatment; and
CDP-870, another drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis.
-
- With an enlarged research and development budget, Pfizer
hopes to discover and develop more new drugs faster than its competitors.
The combination would have nearly 120 new chemical entities in development
and 80 so-called drug enhancement projects.
-
- The deal would also introduce Pfizer to two markets it
has never been in before: cancer treatment and ophthalmology.
- Analysts have questioned the value of the drugs Pharmacia
has in development. "Although the company's pipeline contains a number
of interesting new products," Peter Norman, a pharmaceutical consultant
and analyst, wrote in a recent report, "none have clear blockbuster
potential."
-
- A swirl of controversy surrounds one and possibly two
of Pharmacia's top selling arthritis drugs, Celebrex and Bextra. Last month,
Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit-management companies,
said that Celebrex and a rival Merck drug, Vioxx, were being overly prescribed
and have only a narrow benefit over older drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen,
which are available in generic and over-the-counter versions for a fraction
of the price.
-
- Express Scripts said it was recommending that its clients,
which include many employer health plans, require patients who are not
at risk of ulcers to try generic pain relievers first, possibly denting
sales of Celebrex and Bextra, which is similar.
-
- Washington lawmakers have been vocal in recent months
about rising drug prices and their cost to uninsured senior citizens and
states that have to pay escalating Medicaid bills.
-
- But the deal will probably be approved by regulators
because the companies have few overlapping drugs. The only possible overlap
may be between Pharmacia's Detrol and a competing drug that Pfizer is currently
developing. Executives close to the transaction expect the deal to be completed
by the end of the current year.
-
- The executives said they expected the deal to create
as much as $2.5 billion in annual savings by 2005. They expect savings
of $1.4 billion in 2003 and $2.2 billion in 2004. The savings will come
from cuts in administrative costs, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution
and research and development.
-
- Pfizer's absorption of Warner-Lambert was widely admired
as a model of how to fully exploit an acquired portfolio of blockbuster
drugs.
-
- Pfizer's chairman and chief executive, Henry A. McKinnell,
who conceived of the deal, would run the combined company. Fred Hassan,
Pharmacia's chairman and chief executive, would become vice chairman of
Pfizer and get a seat on the board.
-
- Under the deal, Pfizer would trade 1.4 of >its shares
for each share of Pharmacia, according to the executives. That price of
$45.08 a share, based on Friday's close, represents a 38 percent premium
over Pharmacia's stock price of $32.59. Pfizer shareholders would own 77
percent of the combined company, the executive said, while Pharmacia's
shareholders would own 23 percent.
-
- Prior to the completion of the deal, Pharmacia plans
to proceed with its previously announced spinoff to its shareholders of
its remaining stake in Monsanto, the executives said. As a result of the
spinoff, Pharmacia's shareholders would actually receive the equivalent
of about a 44 percent premium, they said.
-
- Pfizer also plans to announce today that it will expand
its $10 billion stock repurchase to $16 billion, a measure that may help
stabilize the value of its stock. After most merger announcements, the
acquirer's stock at least temporarily declines.
-
- Pfizer was advised by Lazard and Bear, Stearns &
Company and represented by the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft law firm.
-
- Pharmacia was advised by Goldman, Sachs and represented
by the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm.
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