Reuters | Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' new chief executive is set to shift the company's focus to branded drugs from generics as he imports a successful strategy of making mid-sized deals from Bristol-Myers Squibb. The transformation -- which hinges on Jeremy Levin picking a handful of winning new products to boost Teva's branded portfolio -- is unlikely to happen overnight.
In hunting for potentially lucrative experimental medicines, Levin will be competing with a wide field of rivals, including the world's biggest pharmaceutical manufacturers, most of whom are hungry for new drugs to refill pipelines depleted by patent expirations.
Levin, senior vice president for strategy, alliances and transactions at Bristol-Myers since 2007, will take the reins at Teva in May in the wake of Shlomo Yanai's surprising resignation after five years at the helm.
Analysts believe the move to change CEOs had been in the works for months since Teva's share performance has been poor and Teva Chairman Phillip Frost said the process to find a successor to Yanai took almost all of last year and that the transition process should be orderly.
The South African-born, Cambridge-educated Levin, global head of business development and strategic alliances at Novartis from 2003 to 2007, has so far declined to give any specifics on his strategy for Israel-based Teva, citing the need to complete a "deep dive" in the next few months.
But he told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday that there was no difference between generic and proprietary drugs.
"I have a deep philosophy in that medicines are medicines. It does not matter whether they are branded or generic," Levin said. "The key question is can you make the affordable and can you provide them to patients."
Teva's Nasdaq shares were up 6.5 percent at $42.97 on Tuesday, still nearly 40 percent below a year's high of $57.08 on January 26, 2011.
