stand for election would be our Chairman, who has presided over the loss of shareholder value and sparked the proxy fight.” A month later, Greene announced he was joining the rebels and he urged shareholders to vote for the dissidents’ slate of candidates. He later explained in a note to me that Amylin had been “naïve” in its business strategy, and that certain directors “encumbered with traditional pharmaceutical dogma and our past mistakes should be replaced.”
Obviously a lot of other shareholders felt the same way about the leadership on Amylin’s board, Greene says. “It’s unfortunate that the parties couldn’t come to this conclusion a month ago,” Greene said. “They would have saved themselves a lot of time and money.”
To Greene, Amylin’s previous strategy for selling exenatide (Byetta) was too much of a “Big Pharma” approach and he figuratively shakes his head at the notion of targeting primary care physicians—rather than focusing more effort on endocrinology specialists who are more likely to prescribe the Amylin product.
“They prescribe pills,” Greene says of primary care physicians. “The only injectible they’re used to prescribing is insulin, and that’s been around for 80 years. And primary care physicians tend to use the threat of insulin injectibles as a way of scaring their obese patients to lose weight. So they have a sort of built-in negative attitude. But you know the new (injection) pens with the 31 gauge needles are so easy to use now, and so sharp, that patients who use them say it’s no big deal. So I think we just need to move to a more intensive customer support program.”
Greene also says he is “absolutely not concerned” that Icahn and Eastbourne intend to dress Amylin up for a quick sale to a big pharmaceutical company. “The company is way undervalued,” Greene says. “I take Carl Icahn at face value when he says he wants to improve Amylin.”
Greene says he also continues to support Amylin CEO Daniel Bradbury. “I look forward to him now blossoming,” Greene says. “He now has a charter clearly to go in and make some changes in the way things have been done. There’s no more beholding to the senior folks who helped put him in there.”
Asked whether he thought he was a factor in the board election, Greene says, “Who knows? Maybe the founder does have some credibility… Now all I want to do is make the best of it. It’s going to be a breath of fresh air.”
