Last week, TheStreet shared their pick for the worst biotech CEO of 2008. This week, it's looking at the other end of the spectrum: Myriad Genetics' CEO Peter Meldrum earns Street writer Adam Feuerstein's vote as the best CEO of 2008. Feurestein says Meldrum earned the Swanson Trophy (named after Genentech's founding CEO Robert Swanson) for "pulling off one of the smartest drug licensing deals of all time."
Investors were already losing patience with Myriad's Alzheimer's treatment Flurizan when the company inked a licensing deal with Danish drugmaker Lundbeck--a deal that included an up-front $100 million payment. Unfortunately for Lundbeck, just a month later Flurizan went belly-up in a Phase III trial, but Myriad got to keep the money non-refundable payment, which covered the cost of conducting a Phase III trial of the doomed drug. Meldrum effectively passed Myriad's problem drug to Lundbeck and got $100 million in the process. That deal, along with the strong performance of the company's genetic cancer testing business, sent Myriad's stock up 35 percent this year.
Feurestein reports that there are about three dozen biotech firms that increased shareholder value in 2008 despite the difficult economic situations. Here are the stand-out CEOs from that group:
- Emergent Biosolutions CEO Fuad El-Hibri, Idenix Pharmaceuticals CEO Jean-Pierre Sommadossi and IDM Pharma CEO Tim Walbert are to be congratulated for heading up the companies with the best-performing biotech stocks.
- Sirtris Pharmaceuticals chief Christoph Westphal engineered the $720 million buyout deal with GlaxoSmithKline.
- Deborah Dunsire of Millennium Pharmaceuticals also pleased shareholders with the $9 billion sale of the company to Takeda--one of the biggest deals of 2008.
- Among the biggest biotechs, Gilead's CEO John Martin (photo) and Amgen chief Kevin Sharer (photo) both deserve praise for their performance this year.
- see TheStreet report