Paying for prescription drugs is getting harder. New drugs are more expensive than they used to be and consumers are shouldering more of the out-of-pocket costs. Here's how you can cut the cost of prescription drugs.
Pfizer's blockbuster $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth sure has the whiff of nostalgia about it. Not only was the deal announced on a Monday morning after a weekend of furtive negotiating - when was the last time a major deal, rather than a bailout, was announced on a Monday morning? - but also its massive size and the fact that seven banks "advised" on it also seemed to be a return to the good old days of 2006 and early 2007 when Merger Mondays were all the rage.
Wall Street analysts have been urging pharma giant Pfizer to do something big and something soon. So that's what Pfizer did. The company's proposed acquisition of Wyeth in a deal valued at $68 billion is big, in fact the biggest pharma deal in almost a decade. But is it the right thing to fix Pfizer's particular set of problems? The New York City-based company has faced increased scrutiny as the looming expiration of its blockbuster statin drug Lipitor, which brings in about a quarter of Pfizer's revenue, is set to expire in 2011. What's more, the flow of new drugs through the company's pipeline has slowed considerably.
The pharma giant Pfizer said it is cutting up to 8% of its research staff.
At first glance, Pfizer seems more virile than ever. The pharmaceutical giant has a sector-leading $26 billion in cash, and its profits last quarter were triple the year before. Pfizer's portfolio includes household names such as Viagra, the famous blue impotency pill, and Lipitor, the anti-cholesterol drug that is the world's best-selling medication.
Amid the deluge of drug advertising and news about safety issues, plenty of patients are bewildered over how to weigh the risks and benefits of a medication, or even how to find out what they are
Federal regulators have warned Pfizer Inc. for not mentioning the risks of Viagra in an advertisement featuring country musicians singing the praises of its popular impotency pill
Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, reported adjusted quarterly earnings that exceeded Wall Street's estimates on Wednesday and lifted its full-year sales outlook.
Big Pharma, fueled by promising pipelines and cost-cutting, is poised for a strong 2008, analysts say, while projections are mixed for the biotech sector.
It's been a rough 2007 for Big Pharma workers. Crippled by mounting competition and slowing pipelines, the country's largest drugmakers have announced plans to shed a record number of jobs this year - more than 30,000 at last count - that are unlikely to ever return.
Paying for prescription drugs is getting harder. New drugs are more expensive than they used to be and consumers are shouldering more of the out-of-pocket costs. Here's how you can cut the cost of prescription drugs.
Pfizer's blockbuster $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth sure has the whiff of nostalgia about it. Not only was the deal announced on a Monday morning after a weekend of furtive negotiating - when was the last time a major deal, rather than a bailout, was announced on a Monday morning? - but also its massive size and the fact that seven banks "advised" on it also seemed to be a return to the good old days of 2006 and early 2007 when Merger Mondays were all the rage.
Wall Street analysts have been urging pharma giant Pfizer to do something big and something soon. So that's what Pfizer did. The company's proposed acquisition of Wyeth in a deal valued at $68 billion is big, in fact the biggest pharma deal in almost a decade. But is it the right thing to fix Pfizer's particular set of problems? The New York City-based company has faced increased scrutiny as the looming expiration of its blockbuster statin drug Lipitor, which brings in about a quarter of Pfizer's revenue, is set to expire in 2011. What's more, the flow of new drugs through the company's pipeline has slowed considerably.
The pharma giant Pfizer said it is cutting up to 8% of its research staff.
At first glance, Pfizer seems more virile than ever. The pharmaceutical giant has a sector-leading $26 billion in cash, and its profits last quarter were triple the year before. Pfizer's portfolio includes household names such as Viagra, the famous blue impotency pill, and Lipitor, the anti-cholesterol drug that is the world's best-selling medication.
Amid the deluge of drug advertising and news about safety issues, plenty of patients are bewildered over how to weigh the risks and benefits of a medication, or even how to find out what they are
Federal regulators have warned Pfizer Inc. for not mentioning the risks of Viagra in an advertisement featuring country musicians singing the praises of its popular impotency pill
Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, reported adjusted quarterly earnings that exceeded Wall Street's estimates on Wednesday and lifted its full-year sales outlook.
Big Pharma, fueled by promising pipelines and cost-cutting, is poised for a strong 2008, analysts say, while projections are mixed for the biotech sector.
It's been a rough 2007 for Big Pharma workers. Crippled by mounting competition and slowing pipelines, the country's largest drugmakers have announced plans to shed a record number of jobs this year - more than 30,000 at last count - that are unlikely to ever return.
It's been hard for Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, to catch a break lately.
U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. is looking to outsource as much as 30 percent of its manufacturing, much of it to Asia, Martin MacKay, head of Pfizer's global research and development, said Friday.
A closely-watched forecast of drug industry revenue growth released today projects that sales in 2008 will expand at their slowest pace in more than four decades. The reason: A combination of virtually empty Big Pharma product pipelines and increasing price competition from inexpensive generic drugs.
In the last week of trading, shares of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis have jumped 5.5% on rumors that U.S. pharma giant Pfizer is pondering the purchase of a significant share of its business. There are two hypothetical scenarios now circulating the markets. One of them makes sense for Pfizer. The other? Not so much.
Pfizer's newly-appointed chief scientist Martin Mackay wants to help the company think small.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked the top brass of nearly 300 U.S. companies to better explain the pay packages of top executives, according to a report Friday.
You'd think it was 1999 all over again.
Pfizer said Wednesday that it named an industry outsider, Alcatel-Lucent executive Frank D'Amelio, as chief financial officer of the struggling drugmaker.
The FDA on Monday accused Pfizer of false advertising for its anti-schizophrenia drug Geodon.
The government approved a novel drug Monday to help patients with the AIDS virus who are running out of options, while acknowledging lingering questions about the pills' long-term effects
Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest pharmaceutical company, Monday said it increased the number of experimental drugs in the final testing stages and pledged to triple its late-stage portfolio by 2009.
The Street is bullish on Big Pharma, and experts believe the launch of new, fast-growing drugs fueled earnings for most of the major U.S. drugmakers in the second quarter.
A single pill appears to hold promise in curbing the urges to both smoke and drink, according to researchers trying to help people overcome addiction by targeting a pleasure center in the brain
An experimental anti-clotting medicine from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Pfizer Inc. met its main effectiveness and safety goals in a mid-stage study, researchers said Sunday, positioning it as a future option over current popular but problematic drugs.
Pfizer Inc. said Wednesday that U.S. health regulators will approve its novel AIDS drug called maraviroc once certain conditions have been met, although the world's biggest drugmaker did not elaborate on what was necessary to obtain outright approval.
Pfizer Inc. said on Wednesday it has discontinued trials of an experimental lung cancer drug licensed from Coley Pharmaceutical Group after an independent review committee deemed it ineffective, spurring a 60 percent decline in Coley shares.
Pfizer (PFE) ranks no. 39 on FORTUNE's list of America's largest corporations.
Peter Rost is worked up about pink cupcakes. The ex-Pfizer senior executive turned blogger believes he has uncovered another instance of unethical marketing by Big Pharma. Today he's taking on Astr...
Authorities in northern Nigeria have filed a $2 billion civil case and were preparing criminal charges against the U.S. drug company Pfizer
The Dow has been setting record highs recently, but the market still contains pockets of undervalued stocks.
Pfizer's first-quarter earnings managed to beat analyst forecasts Friday despite the patent loss of the blood pressure blockbuster Norvasc and anemic sales from the new diabetes product Exubera.
This is a big week for the U.S. drug industry's earnings, with mixed results expected from a slew of brand-name drugmakers that carry a common theme: getting squeezed by the loss of blockbuster products.
It's hard out there for drug sales reps--particularly if they work in places where gaining access to doctors is becoming increasingly difficult.
Merck and Pfizer are giving AIDS patients something to hope for: a new generation of experimental drugs that could prolong their lives.
Pfizer announced Monday that it will cut 10,000 jobs and close five plants, including three R&D sites and two factories, by the end of 2008, and said its quarterly earnings grew but sales were little changed.
Pfizer appears to be getting ready to slash thousands more workers and shut down some of its plants, but part two of CEO Jeffrey Kindler's plan to revitalize the struggling drugmaker did not inspire rave reviews on Wall Street Tuesday.
With the failure of torcetripib behind it, Pfizer is now likely to play to its strengths to add more medicines to its pipeline.
Pfizer's decision to suspend tests of its latest drug for the treatment of high cholesterol underscores the key problem facing most large pharmaceutical companies. Once a drugmaker has reached a certain size, it's an enormous challenge to generate new blockbusters fast enough to maintain a high growth rate.
Stocks surged Monday, sending the the S&P 500 to a fresh six-year high, as investors welcomed a slew of merger news and a slump in oil prices.
Stocks surged Monday, pushing the Dow up about 100 points and sending the S&P 500 near a fresh six-year high, as investors welcomed a slew of merger news and a slump in oil prices.
For as long as anyone on Wall Street can remember, Pfizer executives have promised to follow up Lipitor, the company's blockbuster cholesterol pill, with something even bigger and better.
Stocks surged Monday, pushing the Dow up about 100 points and sending the S&P 500 near a fresh six-year high, as investors welcomed a slew of merger news and a slump in oil prices.
A wave of merger news and a slump in oil prices helped fire up the stock market near midday Monday, with investors returning with gusto after last week's declines.
A slew of merger news and a slide in oil prices were among the factors lifting stocks Monday morning, tempering concerns about Pfizer after it halted development of a key new drug.
Shares rose Monday as merger news in various industries trumped bad news from Pfizer that it's touted experimental cholesterol dug had to be scrapped.
Stocks were looking for direction early Monday, as problems for drugmaker Pfizer sent the shares of that Dow component sharply lower in European trading but could be balanced by some multi-billion dollar mergers..
Stocks were looking for direction early Monday, despite problems for drugmaker Pfizer which sent the shares of that Dow component sharply lower in European trading.
Stocks surged Wednesday, rising for a second straight session, as investors welcomed a surprisingly strong read on GDP growth, which helped soothe worries about the speed of the economic slowdown.
Analysts and investors are giving Pfizer the thumbs up for its job-slashing announcement.
Stocks surged Wednesday morning, as investors welcomed a better-than-expected read on economic growth, a mixed read on housing and some company news from Pfizer and Ford Motor.
Pfizer said it would cut its U.S. sales force by 20 percent as part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs.
Big Pharma companies Pfizer, Lilly and Wyeth beat analysts' expectations Thursday with reports of strong gains in third-quarter earnings, though Pfizer isn't expecting annual profit growth until 2009 and is ramping up its already ambitious cost-cutting efforts.
Stocks slipped Friday afternoon, following a mixed read on the labor market in September, with the Dow industrials retreating after hitting a record high in the previous session.
Pfizer ranks no. 101 on FORTUNE's Global 500 this year, with $51.4 billion in revenues, down 3% from the previous year. The New York, New York-based company was ranked no. 75 on the 2005 list. Its 2005 profits were $8.1 billion, down 28.8% from a year earlier. 2005 was a banner year for most Global 500 companies.
Pfizer's newly-anointed chief executive Jeffrey Kindler told analysts that his company will balance the opportunities of an expanding market and an aging population, with the limits imposed by healthcare systems around the world.
Novo Nordisk has sued Pfizer, alleging that the new product Exubera violates patents on inhalable insulin for diabetics.
The biggest drug company in the world has a new man at the helm, and analysts are hoping Jeffrey Kindler won't make the same mistakes as his outgoing predecessor, Henry McKinnell.
Pfizer named Jeffrey Kindler, the company's general counsel, to succeed Henry "Hank" McKinnell as CEO of the world's largest pharmaceutical company, the company announced Friday.
The world's biggest drugmaker is launching a potential blockbuster today, but it's going to take more than that for the company to pull out of its rut.
Pfizer and Schering-Plough could easily snap up the smaller drugmaker Sepracor but industry analysts say risks to its two products would limit any potential gains.
Here we look for what Jeremy Siegel calls "corporate El Dorados" - those titans that rack up long stretches of solid profitability. In his latest book, The Future for Investors (Random House, 2005), the Wharton finance professor shows how companies that have marketed "tried-and-true" products for decades in slow-growth or even declining industries have superior returns to firms that develop "the bold and the new."
Drugmaker Pfizer received bids worth more than $14 billion for its consumer products unit, which includes well-known products like Listerine, Rolaids and Sudafed, according to a published report.
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Nigerian medical experts concluded Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections, the Washington Post reported in Sunday editions, citing a copy of the panel's confidential report.
IS Hank McKinnell a failure? A success? Or something in between? Those are the questions people in and out of Pfizer are pondering as its CEO enters his final years on the job.
If only the rest of Big Pharma were as lucky as Pfizer. In the midst of what most top-level managers agree is a CEO talent drought, the New York-based pharma-colossus has no less than three potential CEOs vying to take over when current top guy Hank McKinnell retires in 2008. But there are quite a few sharp elbows being thrown in the race to the top.
With $100 billion worth of branded drugs losing patent protection in the next five years, Big Pharma needs new drugs -- and licensing from smaller companies is proving to be a cheaper, less risky way of securing potential products than buying those companies outright.
Potential buyers are knocking on Pfizer's door for its $10 billion consumer products division, and people are scratching their heads over what the company plans to once they get their hands on the money.
Pfizer stock's got battered and bloodied last year, but it's making a comeback.
Drug sales, bolstered by Medicare coverage, are projected to keep rising for the next 10 years, and biotechs are expected to get the lion's share of that increase, while the more traditional Big Pharma companies get squeezed by generic drug makers.
Drug sales, bolstered by Medicare coverage, are projected to keep rising for the next 10 years, and biotechs are expected to get the lion's share of that increase, while the more traditional Big Pharma companies get squeezed by generic drug makers.
Losers outnumbered winners in late December and early January. As the year turned, 37 of the 70 stocks posted a decline and only 32 rose (IBM was unchanged). Six stocks--Aetna, CVS, DuPont, Genente...
Pfizer Inc. gave earnings guidance Friday that was below analysts' estimates.
Stocks got a boost at the open Thursday after better-than-expected earnings from Pfizer and Merrill calmed concerns about corporate results.
Have you seen Pfizer's stock price lately? It could be worse. In fact, it has been worse.
Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan raised short-term interest rates last week to 4.25 percent, the highest level in 4-1/2 years.
Stocks ended lower for the third consecutive session Monday, reversing earlier advances as tech concerns and economic anxiety outweighed a big Pfizer patent victory and falling oil prices.
Stocks struggled early Monday as a jump in shares of Pfizer after a patent ruling weren't enough to ignite a broader round of buying.
After the market closed on Friday and trading floors began to empty for the holidays, there suddenly came long-awaited and momentous news about one of the world's biggest companies.
the time to ignore stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average may not be very active, but beneath the surface of today's market, there's actually quite a lot going on. ...
CALL THEM the Big Eight. Of the 50 women on the power list, only these highfliers are at the very top of their companies--as chair or CEO. By order of ranking, they are Meg Whitman, eBay; Anne Mulc...
Picking stocks is an inexact science--so inexact you can be wrong even when you're right. Just consider the story we did on health-care stocks back in May 2004. (See "Rx for Investors" on fortune.com.) We argued that the health-care sector would continue to outpace the broader stock market, just as it has since the mid-1990s, serving the medical needs of an aging populace. "There's no denying the sheer market potential of 75 million trick-kneed, Prevacid-popping, ointment-loving consumers," we wrote. "You can almost hear the cash registers ring." Well, a year and a half later, the only thing ringing has been alarm bells. Concerns about drug patent expirations and meager new-product pipelines have sidetracked pharmaceutical stocks. Pharma industry tracker IMS Health expects growth in drug sales in 2006 to be the lowest in ten years. And in the medical devices arena, fierce competition and increased pricing pressure are crimping earnings growth. The Feds aren't helping either: In September, Guidant, Medtron
If the future of Big Pharma can be read in its pipelines, Eli Lilly & Co. and Sanofi-Aventis are among the few bright spots, analysts say -- but investors should also look at Pfizer, which is experimenting with a drug combo that could outsell all others.
Pfizer CEO Henry McKinnell got grilled by industry analysts Thursday after the world's biggest drugmaker pulled its financial guidance for 2006 and 2007.
Stocks slumped Thursday on a mix of disappointing profit outlooks from eBay and Pfizer, worries about inflation and slower economic growth, following Wednesday's late-day rally.
Stocks were on a teeter-totter Thursday morning as investors balanced earnings concerns with some solid reports.
If sales reps for drug companies really want to impress doctors, they'll be generous with free samples and not waste time with rambling pitches, according to a market report released Wednesday.
Drugmakers Pfizer Inc. and Vicuron Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Sunday that Pfizer's proposed $1.9 billion acquisition of Vicuron has cleared a federal antitrust review, and will be completed Wednesday.
After watching the stock market go mostly sideways for more than a year, you may be wishing that you could just doze off and have someone wake you when things get interesting again. But now is not ...
Sunlight streams through a window of a St. Petersburg hospital, highlighting the gray stubble on Alexander Ershov's chin as he caresses a plum-sized tumor above his collarbone. Two years ago the 59...
Drugmakers have cut television ad spending by 10 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, the sharpest decline in two years, a newspaper said Tuesday.
Pfizer could lose about 1 percent in projected sales in 2009 because it pulled two drugs from its pipeline, according to an analyst report that described the impact as "limited."
Pfizer Inc. said on Wednesday it has begun production of a key new drug that combines its best-selling cholesterol drug Lipitor with a new compound designed to raise levels of "good" cholesterol.
A critic of the drug industry's pricing policy is facing virtual corporate exile at Pfizer, according to a published report.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Revatio, a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension that uses the same active ingredient as Viagra, said Pfizer Inc. on Monday.
Pfizer is planning to launch a new drug, possibly by year-end, to treat a rare but deadly form of stomach cancer, that could bring in up to $800 million a year for the world's biggest drugmaker, an industry analyst said Monday.
For pharma investors the symptoms of anemia--or worse--are everywhere: Drug recalls. Patent expirations. A dearth of new blockbusters. Pfizer (PFE, $27), the largest pharmaceutical company in the w...
Pfizer Inc., whose first-quarter results were weighed down by its decision to repatriate $28 billion in foreign profits, said Friday that it may elect to bring home another $10.6 billion .
Stocks crept higher early Tuesday, as investors welcomed falling oil prices and strength in Dow stock Pfizer at the start of its meeting with analysts.
As it prepares for its latest round of analyst meetings this week, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer faces a range of difficult choices in wrestling with soon-to-expire patents on several key drugs.
Pfizer Inc. said Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration has approved its depo-subQ provera 104 birth control drug for use against pain for a gynecological condition as well.
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