Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Pfizer - Bextra: how to hide $ 2.3 billion

FiercePharma writes:

News of the Pfizer-Wyeth merger this morning drowned out some not so good news for the company. Just after announcing its $68 billion buyout of Wyeth, Pfizer published its 2008 fourth quarter earnings report. In it, Pfizer reveals a $2.3 billion charge to end investigations into allegations of off-label promotions of the company's COX-2 meds, including Bextra.

That settlement caused a 90 percent reduction in Pfizer's 2008 net income, according to its financial report.

Pfizer settled another set of lawsuits involving Bextra for $894 million last October. But the company seems to have been hiding this news in plaint sight, says
BNET, pointing out that Pfizer reported the DOJ investigations to the SEC, but never revealed them in press releases.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just so we can think about what else could be done with that sort of money if we weren't paying fines, $2.3 billion is larger than the annual GDP of about 40 different countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)