The Troubled History of Mylan, Founded by Two U.S. Army Buddies

(Bloomberg) -- Dogged by price collusion allegations, controversy around its EpiPen, management ethics and years of share underperformance, the latest chapter in Mylan NV’s checkered history looks set to result in a combination with a part of Pfizer Inc. Here’s a look at the company’s timeline so far:

• 1961: Milan Puskar and Don Panoz, who met while serving in the U.S. army, found Mylan Pharmaceuticals as a drug distributor in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
• 2002: Robert Coury takes over as chief executive officer
• 2004, July: Mylan discloses a plan to buy King Pharmaceuticals Inc. in a $4 billion deal
  • September: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who held a 8.9% stake at the time, slams the deal for being too expensive and dilutive to shareholders. In November, he offers to buy Mylan for $5.38 billion through his High River Limited Partnership in an attempt to block the King purchase
• 2005, February: Mylan abandons its King bid after failing to agree on terms
  • June: Icahn restates his $20-a-share offer
  • July: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s investigating 120 reports of deaths that may be linked to painkiller patches sold by Mylan and Johnson & Johnson. Icahn drops his takeover bid for Mylan and sells his stake

EpiPen Deal

• 2007: Mylan agrees to buy Merck KGaA’s generic-drug unit for 4.9 billion euros to become the world’s third-largest maker of copycat versions of drugs. It acquires the rights to sell EpiPen, the emergency allergy antidote
  • In the decade after, it raised the price of the product from about $50 for a single pen to more than $600 for a two-pack
• 2008: West Virginia University says two officials would resign after it was reported they had a role in giving Heather Bresch, Mylan’s chief operating officer and daughter of Joe Manchin, senator from West Virginia, a degree she allegedly didn’t earn
• 2009: Milan Puskar steps down as chairman of board
• 2011: Mylan spent more than $500,000 for Coury to have personal use of the company’s private plane, the Journal reports
• 2012, January: Coury becomes chairman of the board and is succeeded as CEO by Bresch
• 2014: Mylan buys Abbott Laboratories’ generic drug business in established markets like Europe and forms a new company to be incorporated in the Netherlands
  • The company’s relocation -- undertaken for tax reasons -- allows Mylan to set up an independent foundation, or “stichting,” a centuries-old legal structure that can help the company ward off an unwanted offer by issuing new shares
• 2015, April: Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. makes an unsolicited offer to buy Mylan for about $40.1 billion
  • Mylan rejects the bid as too low and pursues a separate hostile bid for drugmaker Perrigo Co. Teva abandons its bid for Mylan in July and agrees to buy Allergan’s generic drug business instead

The Real Questions Begin

• 2015, October: Mylan says it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking documents about a land development deal involving its vice chairman Rodney L Piatt
• 2016, September: CEO Bresch is questioned by lawmakers. The House’s Oversight Committee grills her over ethics and a $19 million pay package during a hearing examining how the company raised prices on its EpiPen
• 2016, November: Bloomberg reports Mylan is among drugmakers to receive subpoenas as part of a sweeping criminal investigation into price collusion begun two years prior
• 2017, October: A civil investigation by dozens of states conducting a multiyear probe into alleged price collusion names Rajiv Malik, Mylan’s president and executive director, as part of an expanded complaint against pharmaceutical companies
• 2018, May: Mylan’s EpiPen was placed on the FDA’s shortage list in May after more than 400 patients in 45 states reported difficulty filling prescriptions
• 2018, August: Mylan announces a strategic review to evaluate a “wide range” of options to “unlock the true value” of the company

Still Waiting

• 2019, May: Mylan shares fall the most in 19 years after the company offers no updates on the review amid manufacturing problems, competition and declining prices that Bresch says created “unprecedented volatility.”
• 2019, May: Mylan is among generic drug makers including Teva and a unit of Pfizer targeted in a lawsuit filed by states alleging drug price-fixing after a five-year investigation
• 2019, July: Pfizer Inc. plans to combine its off-patent business, which includes Lipitor cholesterol pills and male-impotence drug Viagra, with Mylan and form a generic drug giant, people familiar with the matter say
  • Michael Goettler, who runs Pfizer’s off-patent drug unit, would become chief executive of the combined company. Mylan Chairman Coury would be executive chairman, one of the people said
  • Current Mylan CEO Bresch and Malik would depart

--With assistance from Riley Ray Griffin.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sally Bakewell in New York at sbakewell1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net, James Ludden, Ian Fisher

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