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Ackman Loses $700 Million Instantly After Democrats Demand Subpoena
Yet another nail in the Biotech Bubble's coffin as Bloomberg reports House Democrats demand a subpoena for Valeant over "massive price increases." The stock is down 12 % on the news extending the collapse of the last few days and weighing very heavily on the broad Biotech index.
- *HOUSE OVERSIGHT CMTE DEMOCRATS REQUEST SUBPOENA FOR VALEANT
- *DEMOCRATS SEND LETTER TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JASON CHAFFETZ
- *HOUSE CMTE DEMOCRATS WANT VALEANT TO TURN OVER DOCUMENTS
It's been an ugly week...
As Bloomberg reports,
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. shares fell as much as 14 percent after Democrats in the U.S. House asked to subpoena the company for documents relating to drug price increases, the latest move by politicians seeking to curb price hikes on acquired drugs.
“We believe it is critical to hold drug companies to account when they engage in ‘a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced specialty drugs,’" 18 Democratic representatives wrote in a letter to Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House’s committee on oversight and government reform. They highlighted Valeant’s heart drugs Nitropress and Isuprel, whose prices increased by 212 percent and 525 percent the day that Valeant acquired them.
Very bad news for Bill Ackman and his 20 million shares...
Charts: Bloomberg
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Didn't Holder already prove you can simply ignore Congressional subpoenas?
I'd tell them to go fuck themselves and "why don't you investigate Roger Clemens again?"
... and Yellen confirmed. Congressional subpoenas are for little people only.
The upshot of this subpoena will be that Valeant and Ackman start contributing to some Democrats fundraising committees. As Paul Singer could tell you, politicians can be bought cheaply.
Hedge fund operator Paul Singer, who runs Elliott Associates L.P., made some $500 million after the FDA gave a company he owns exclusive rights to sell the ancient medicine colchicine. Singer's generic drug company in 2010 raised the price of a colchicine pill from a nickel to $5.00.
Since 1997, Elliott Associates has been the majority owner of URL Pharma, a.k.a. Mutual Pharmaceutical Company, Inc., a Philadelphia based manufacturer of generic drugs. In 2010, the FDA granted URL Pharma three year exclusivity on the sale of its branded version of colchicine, called Colcrys. Colchicine is an ancient treatment of gout, going back 2,000 years ago. [wikipedia: "Colchicum extract was first described as a treatment for gout in De Materia Medica by Pedanius Dioscorides, in the first century AD."] The FDA based this drug exclusivity on a one week study URL did on 185 subjects in 2009, some of whom received a placebo. That study was a scam, as the FDA well knew, made in order to get exclusivity under the Hatch-Waxman amendments passed in 2006. Once URL Pharma got its exclusivity based on smoke, mirrors and payoffs, it raised the pill cost of the colchicine from a dime or less to $5.00. The FDA threatened severe legal action against the other generic makers of colchicine, forcing them to stop selling their low cost versions of the drug.
In 2012, Takeda Pharmaceuticals paid $800 million for URL Pharma, just to get control of its brand name version of colchicine, Colcrys. Also in 2012, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch received a campaign contributions of $38,750 from Elliott Management, the first time Paul Singer gave Hatch campaign money on the books. Singer made another contribution of the same amount for the 2014 election cycle, again making him one of Hatch's top 20 donors. As mentioned, Senator Hatch was co-sponsor of the Hatch-Waxman amendments that allowed the FDA to create the three year exclusivity program [racket] in 2006.
Having pocketed his massive profits on URL Pharma, in the hundreds of millions of dollars (thanks to the FDA's selective enforcement of the 2006 Hatch-Waxman amendments), Paul Singer went on his merry way, occasionally posting online his opinions on the world economic affairs at the Zero Hedge website. For Takeda, the outlook is not so rosy. West Ward, a former generic manufacturer of colchicine, is again selling its generic version of the drug. Takeda filed suit in the Federal Circuit last year to block the sale, along with Elliott Associates L.P. The latest legal news: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an order Jan. 9 [2015] that essentially allows West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Corp., an Eatontown, N.J.-based generic-drug manufacturer, to begin selling a new branded version of colchicine."
So, thanks to the FDA, bought and paid for, a gout medication went up in price from a dime to $5 a pill, patients (and drug insurers like Medicare) were price gouged, Paul Singer made hundreds of millions of dollars and Takeda Pharmaceuticals got taken to the cleaners.
http://www.takeda.com/news/2012/20120411_3955.html
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2014&cid=N00009869&type=I&newmem=N
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2011/0...
https://www.centerwatch.com/drug-information/fda-approved-drugs/drug/106...
Maybe the title should read "Oligarch loses $400 million instantly because house demoncrats have put options on Valeant and issue subpoena".
Campaign contributions must not be up to snuff.
Rule #1: Don't get caught.......
Rule #2: When caught, lie.
Rule #3: Tell the lie so often that it becomes fact.
Rule #4: If rules 1-3 didn't work, then blame it on some renegade peon.
Phuk Pharma long time,,,
;-D
From Pareto to Bill Ackman: "Maaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaa!"
I have personally surmised that only about 20% of a given population would be necessary to end up controlling the sentiment, and thereby the moral, ethical, and legal direction of a culture. If they are vociferous, assured, and publicly pristine enough, there opinions sway the masses, which often are content to be unpolarized without outside influence. Thank you for introducing me to an additional reason to believe my intuition; I was unfamiliar with Pareto.
Whoops that's just a DROP IN THE BUBBLE.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/daraprim-like-drug-costs-less-0-07-india-1521144
Just where I want my medication manufactured - in a country where 665 million people shit along the road.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&pid=newsarchive
I will bet Hilary is SHORT THIS STOCK.
Wake me when Goldman or Blackrock go out of business or when their CEOs have been guillotined after being convicted of treason.
lose 1 billion and explode
One start to a "solution" is to make a rule where US drug prices cannot be sold higher than any price outside the USA. The reason is that the US tax payer is giving large tax subsidies to drug research-why should the drug be sold here higher than overseas?....
Da fuq is a "tax subsidy"?
You mean the government not taking money that others have earned by creating a value-producing product.
Just stop subsidizing them...that's all you have to do. Stop defending their prices and their patents...let them hire lawyers and defend them themselves, on a case by case basis.
Force them to set their prices in the market, and let them face some real competition, and those prices will come down hard and fast.
Government doesn't have to DO anything...just STOP doing and leave it alone.
Yet somehow, he'll "ponzi" his way to +20% on the year, performance wise.
Whenever I see an article with Ackman in the headline I read it. Sometimes the article is sooo good that I burst out laughing. I just can't help it.
hate this little weenie fucker. Hope he dies in a fire
Jews seem to have an affinity for fire! :)
No Fund manager should even be 'invested' in Biotech, it is even worse than the FIRE sector. One does not invest in a hustle, which is what those spaces are when you aggregate them together.
If Ackman wanted to start up his own scam companies in those spaces and IPO them that would be another thing entirely.
you just described the plot of "Boiler Room"
-700 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1-jOk1t9VI
Shit Tyler, you may need an auto refresh like Drudge because when I clicked on it, it was a 400 million loss then read and refreshed and it was a 700 million loss.
Yet another nail in the Biotech Bubble's coffin as Bloomberg reports Valeant receives a subpoena from House Democrats over "massive price increases."
I have seen this theme recently.
Any monopoly controls the price and sets it any place it pleases. Turing had a 5,000% price increase, just because they could.
Why are people even wanting to use some of these drugs in the first place? The list of possible side effects brings one thought to my mind- poison.
Denninger just had a comment about statins having a negative effect on the aging process. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230725
Karl's latest is on SSRI's:
"The writing I've done about kids and SSRIs -- specifically, their propensity to create both suicidal and homicidal rage monsters in people under the age of 25 -- just got local.
The other day a kid in one of our local high schools showed up with a gun in his backpack. He told a few people he intended to kill himself. The cops got involved immediately and he was arrested.
So far everything appears on the up-and-up.
But there is a twist to this story -- the State, as would be expected with a 16 year old, is apparently intending to charge the kid as an adult for bringing a loaded firearm to school. But this young man was recently, according to his parents, put on Celexa -- and neither they or their son was told about the risk of SSRIs provoking both suicidal and rage-monster behavior"
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230731
And what about all the new lymphoma cases from all the biologics they are pushing? Several people I know personally have been diagnosed with a rather aggressive form of lymphoma after using those drugs...no hx of this in their family, no other risk factors. They are sent straight to chemo...
They couldn't get my mother in fast enough...the next day after diagnosis, they had the needle in her arm. It's like THEY were scared...She's getting better now, but will NEVER take those drugs again.
But watch that lymphoma thing...something very hinky is going on. As for drugs...if it is less than 50 years old, reconsider your 'need'.
From now on, my mother's arthritis will be treated with opiates for any pain, and aspirin/ice for inflammation. If the aspirin upsets her stomach, she'll chew a couple of Tums.
That's one less 6,000 dollar per month customer for Big Pharma...they can fuck off and die.
Vaccines are even bigger risk - mercury levels higher than 30 years ago
I don't believe there actually "is" a subpoena, at least not at this point. The Dems are asking for one, but it's ultimately up to the Republican committee chairman to issue it. This looks like phase 2 of the Democrats efforts to make this an on-going campaign issue. It's going to be a year of pure hell for biotech, I guess. ($700 million down the swirling toilet? Makes me feel a little better about my own losses).
OT question: Energy Transfer finally has gotten a deal to takeover Williams Co (huge oil/gas pipeline company). This was announced today, yet stocks of both companies are in the shitter. WTF?
He's getting crushed on APD recently too. He should have listened to Tepper.
Drugs companies, a classic example of profit above people.
"They highlighted Valeant’s heart drugs Nitropress and Isuprel, whose prices increased by 212 percent and 525 percent the day that Valeant acquired them."
The drug industry is really being stupid, doing something like this. Push always comes to shove, in the opposite direction, when something goes too far.
For Ackman a $700 million loss is nothing in the grand scheme of the synagogue of Satan money worshiping class.
Ackman may have to cut back on manicures
Big investors are going to get a very hard lesson in who to trust. So far, TPTB have supported them and their investments.
But when it starts to unravel for REAL, they will be thrown under the bus with the rest of us, and THEIR wealth will be seized. It won't matter how they cry, or who they know.
They'll join us then, but without their power or their wealth, and they'll kick themselves for their stupidity.
Yet again, DC ignores health insurance companies, the root cause of all this pricing madness. Good old bribery, excuse me, donations covers a multitude of sins.
The Democrats believe that without regulation , greed would kill everyone.
Lets think how things might work out if the FDA rules were voluntary, People would be free to buy drugs , whatever they choose. They would probably not want to poisin themselves, so they would look to a trusted third party to verify the safety and efficacy. Perhaps they would look to the FDA. Perhaps another service , like Undeerwrriters lab would emerge and do an even better job of gaining the public trust, protecting the public, and rationalizing the testing process.
For generic drugs, if the regulatory hurdles were removed, agile competitors such as St. Regis might be able to rev up manufacturing in weeks in the event a dramatic price rise was marked up.
The solution to high prices is high prices, if regulatory mountains are not in the way.
There is absolutely no way this arguement can get past the brain stem of a Democrat without eliciting a reptilian fight response.
and the Rs are too stupid , or bought to understand.
Rot in hell, you Jew bastard!