Sir Richard Sykes to retire as Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline
at Annual General Meeting; Sir Christopher Hogg to become new Chairman
GlaxoSmithKline plc announces that Sir Richard Sykes, currently the Company's
Chairman, has decided to retire from the Board of Directors with effect from
this year's Annual General Meeting, on May 20th. At that time Sir Christopher
Hogg, currently a Non-executive Director of GlaxoSmithKline, will become
Chairman.
March 11, 2002, London :- Sir Richard said:- "Having overseen the
successful merger of GlaxoSmithKline and as I approach my 60th birthday in
August, I feel now is the right time to depart. I wish to devote my time and
energy to my role as Rector of Imperial College and leave GlaxoSmithKline in
great shape for the future". Sir Richard was appointed Deputy Chairman and Chief
Executive of Glaxo in March 1993. He led Glaxo's acquisition of Wellcome in 1995
and was a principal architect of Glaxo Wellcome's merger with SmithKline Beecham
to form GlaxoSmithKline at the end of 2000.
In addition to his new role at GlaxoSmithKline, Sir Christopher Hogg is
Non-executive Chairman of Reuters Group plc and Allied Domecq plc (until March
31st 2002), and Non-executive Director of Air Liquide S.A. He joined the Board
of SmithKline Beecham in 1993. Dr. J.P. Garnier, Chief Executive Officer of
GlaxoSmithKline, said: "On behalf of the Board I would like to pay tribute to
Sir Richard, who has made a tremendous contribution to Glaxo, Glaxo Wellcome and
GlaxoSmithKline. He is a strong and committed ambassador for the pharmaceutical
industry, and a great champion of the UK science base. I wish him well for the
future. At the same time we welcome Sir Christopher as our new Chairman and look
forward to benefiting from his wide-ranging experience and knowledge".
Sir Christopher Hogg
Born on 2 August 1936, Sir Christopher was educated at Marlborough
College; Trinity College, Oxford – MA with 1st Class Honours; Harvard University
– MBA with High Distinction.
Sir Christopher did National Service, 1955-57. He was commissioned in the
Parachute Regiment and parachuted into Port Said during the Suez Crisis in 1956.
On his return from Harvard in 1962, he worked for a year at IMEDE, a business
school in Lausanne. He then spent three years with Philip Hill, Higginson
Erlangers Ltd (subsequently Hill Samuel & Co Ltd), followed by two years with
the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation.
Sir Christopher joined Courtaulds in 1968, becoming a director in 1973. He was
appointed chief executive in 1979 and became chairman on 1 January 1980. He
retired as chief executive in 1991 and was non-executive chairman until July
1996. He was a director of Courtaulds Textiles plc for five years after its
demerger in 1990 from Courtaulds plc, and its non-executive chairman throughout
that period except from May to December 1993.
Sir Christopher has been a non-executive Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline plc since
2002 (non-executive director since 1993) and a non-executive director of Air
Liquide SA since May 2000. Non-executive Chairman of the Royal National Theatre
since 1995. Member of the International Council of JP Morgan since 1998. Former
chairman of Allied Domecq PLC from 1996 to 2002.
Sir Christopher was a member of the Department of Industry’s Industrial
Development Advisory Board from 1976 to 1980. He was a non-executive director of
the Bank of England from March 1992 for a four-year term and a trustee of the
Ford Foundation from 1987 to 1999.
Sir Christopher joined Reuters as non-executive director in May 1984 and
became non-executive Chairman in July 1985.
[From Z Magazine, a leftist partisan publication.]
http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/May2004/levine0504.html
More than one journalist has uncovered corrupt connections between the
Bush Family, psychiatry, and Eli Lilly & Company, the giant pharmaceutical
corporation. While previous Lillygates have been more colorful, Lilly’s
soaking state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa—its blockbuster, antipsychotic
drug—may pack the greatest financial wallop. Worldwide in 2003, Zyprexa
grossed $4.28 billion, accounting for slightly more than one-third of Lilly’
s total sales. In the United States in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion,
70 percent of that attributable to government agencies, mostly Medicaid.
Historically, the exposure of any single Lilly machination—though
sometimes disrupting it—has not weakened the Bush-psychiatry-Lilly
relationship. In the last decade, some of the more widely reported Eli Lilly
intrigues include:
• Influencing the Homeland Security Act to protect itself from
lawsuits
• Accessing confidential patient records for a Prozac sample mailing
• Rigging the Wesbecker Prozac-violence trial
A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes:
• Former President George Herbert Walker Bush (one-time member of the
Eli Lilly board of directors)
• Former CEO of Enron, Ken Lay (one-time member of the Eli Lilly
board of directors)
• George W. Bush’s former director of Management and Budget, Mitch
Daniels (a former Eli Lilly vice president)
• George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council member, Sidney
Taurel (current CEO of Eli Lilly)
• The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a recipient of Eli
Lilly funding) In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies warned
that Zyprexa may be linked to diabetes, but even after the FDA issued a
similar warning in 2003, Lilly’s Zyprexa train was not derailed, as Zyprexa
posted a 16 percent gain over 2002. The growth of Zyprexa has become
especially vital to Lilly because Prozac—Lilly’s best-known product, which
once annually grossed over $2 billion—having lost its patent protection,
continues its rapid decline, down to $645.1 million in 2003. At the same
time regulatory agencies were warning of Zyprexa’s possible linkage to
diabetes, Lilly’s second most lucrative product line was its diabetes
treatment drugs (including Actos, Humulin, and Humalog), which collectively
grossed $2.51 billion in 2003. Lilly’s profits on diabetes drugs and the
possible linkage between diabetes and Zyprexa is not, however, the most
recent Lillygate that Gardiner Harris broke about Zyprexa in the New York
Times on December 18, 2003. Zyprexa costs approximately twice as much as
similar drugs and Harris reported that state Medicaid programs—going in the
red in part because of Zyprexa— are attempting to exclude it in favor of
similar, less expensive drugs. Harris focused on the Kentucky Medicaid
program, which had a $230 million deficit in 2002, with Zyprexa being its
single largest drug expense at $36 million. When Kentucky’s Medicaid program
attempted to exclude it from its list of preferred medications, the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) fought back. The nonprofit
NAMI—ostensibly a consumer organization—bused protesters to hearings, placed
full-page ads in newspapers, and sent faxes to state officials. What NAMI
did not say at the time was that the buses, ads, and faxes were paid for by
Eli Lilly.
Ken Silverstein, in Mother Jones in 1999, reported that NAMI took
$11.7 million from drug companies over a three and a half year period from
1996 through 1999, with the largest donor being Eli Lilly, which provided
$2.87 million. Eli Lilly’s funding also included loaning NAMI a Lilly
executive, who worked at NAMI headquarters, but whose salary was paid for by
Lilly. Though NAMI’s linkage to Lilly is a scandal to psychiatric
survivors—whose journal MindFreedom published copies of Big Pharma checks to
NAMI—the story didn’t have the widespread shock value that would elevate it
to Lillygate status. In 2002, Eli Lilly flexed its muscles at the highest
level of the U.S. government in an audacious Lillygate.
The event was the signing of the Homeland Security Act, praised by
President George W. Bush as a “heroic action” that demonstrated “the resolve
of this great nation to defend our freedom, our security and our way of
life.” Soon after the Act was signed, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
discovered what had been slipped into the Act at the last minute and on
November 25, 2002, he wrote, “Buried in this massive bill, snuck into it in
the dark of night by persons unknown…was a provision that—incredibly—will
protect Eli Lilly and a few other big pharmaceutical outfits from lawsuits
by parents who believe their children were harmed by thimerosal.” Thimerosal is a preservative that contains mercury and is used by Eli
Lilly and others in vaccines. In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the Public Health Service urged vaccine makers to stop using mercury-based
preservatives. In 2001 the Institute of Medicine concluded that the link
between autism and thimerosal was “biologically plausible.” By 2002, thimerosal lawsuits against Eli Lilly were progressing through the courts. The
punchline of this Lillygate is that, in June 2002, President George W. Bush
had appointed Eli Lilly’s CEO, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on his Homeland
Security Advisory Council. Ultimately, even some Republican senators became
embarrassed by this Lillygate and, by early 2003, moderate Republicans and
Democrats agreed to repeal this particular provision in the Homeland
Security Act.
In early 2003, “60 Minutes II” aired a segment on Lillygate and
Prozac. With Prozac’s patent having run out, Eli Lilly began marketing a new
drug, Prozac Weekly. Lilly sales representatives in Florida gained access to
“confidential” patient information records and, unsolicited, mailed out free
samples of Prozac Weekly.
How did Eli Lilly get its hands on these medical records? Regulations
proposed under Clinton and later implemented under Bush contained a
provision that gave health-care providers the right to sell a person’s
confidential medical information to marketing firms and drug companies.
Despite many protests against this proposal, President Bush told Health and
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to allow the new rules to go into
effect. Perhps the most cinematic of all Lillygates culminated in 1997.
The story began in 1989 when Joseph Wesbecker—one month after he began
taking Prozac—opened fire with his AK-47 at his former place of employment,
killing 8 and wounding 12 before taking his own life.
+ Article continues:
http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/May2004/levine0504.html
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