Pfizer is this year’s anti-Eli Lilly. If David Ricks is the best biopharma CEO of 2023, then Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is, unfortunately, the worst.
My annual Worst Biopharma CEO list is typically populated with blockheads and scoundrels. That’s not why Bourla is here. The reason is accountability. Strategic missteps, financial miscalculations, and scientific setbacks have plunged Pfizer into a deep crisis. Bourla is the man at the top, so the responsibility lies with him.
Pfizer shares have fallen 50% this year to their lowest level in more than a decade, erasing nearly $140 billion in market value. In 2022, the company delivered $100 billion in revenue, boosted by a widely used Covid vaccine and Covid treatment. This year, Covid product sales evaporated — and will fall further next year — leaving a vacuum Pfizer is struggling to fill with aging medicines nearing the end of their patent lives, and newer drugs and vaccines that have not performed as expected.
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