Free Republic

Infamous former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli and Howard Schiller, the interim chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Valeant, just faced Congress. Legislators on Thursday wanted them to answer for dramatic drug-price increases that affect the lives of Americans. Shkreli caught national attention when his company purchased a lifesaving drug called Daraprim and then raised the price by over 5,000%. Wall Street was closely watching Schiller; Valeant's stock was a darling until accusations of malfeasance from a short seller and government scrutiny over pricing chopped off a quarter of its stock price last year. At the hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland)...

"News that Turing, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and other drugmakers have bought rights to old, cheap medicines that are the only treatment for serious diseases and then hiked prices severalfold has angered patients. It's triggered government investigations, politicians' proposals to fight "price gouging," heavy media scrutiny and a big slump in biotech stock prices." "Turing's Shkreli, under fire from all sides, said late last month that he would lower the price of Daraprim, but hasn't so far. A Turing spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday but recently noted the company is capping patient copayments at $10."

Seventeen years after it was withdrawn from U.S. markets, a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana is going back on sale as a prescription treatment for the vomiting and nausea that often accompany chemotherapy, the drug's manufacturer said Tuesday. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International hopes to begin selling Cesamet in the next two to three weeks, company president Wes Wheeler said. The Costa Mesa, California, company received Food and Drug Administration approval Monday to resume sales of the drug, which it bought from Eli Lilly and Co. in 2004. Valeant currently sells the drug, also called nabilone, in Canada. Lilly...

Bill Ackman has spent the last five years trying to drive the supplement company Herbalife out of business.He took a $1 billion short position in the company in December 2012, after which its stock dropped 10 percent in six seconds, which led to a temporary trading halt.He informed investors at a 3 ½-hour slide show presentation in Manhattan that same month in which he plodded through a 342-slide presentation that characterized the company not as a multilevel firm that marketing energy and diet drinks, vitamins and skin products but as “the best-managed pyramid scheme in the history of the world.”He...

Last fall, I wrote a piece about Hedge Fund Billionaire Bill Ackman and his unmitigated assault on the health products company Herbalife; Battle of The Hedge Fund Titans. It was an interesting piece about one man’s personal vendetta and attempt to take down a famously successful American company. The short of it (no pun intended), is that Bill Ackman used his hedge fund company, Pershing Square, to take a $1 Billion short position in Herbalife. Thus, banking on the failure of the company to profit immensely, while actually attempting to trigger that failure. Herbalife fought back and the demise of...

Valeant shares plunged as much as 40 percent after an influential short-seller accused the company of fraud, saying it used its relationship with specialty pharmacies to inflate revenue. With the stock’s dramatic swings, Ackman’s portfolio lost as much as $820 million during the day but the loss lessened to roughly $650 million as the price inched up again in mid-afternoon. Cable television station CNBC reported that Ackman bought an additional 2 million shares of Valeant on Wednesday.