Big pharmaceutical company Mylan has been the focus of federal investigations, class-action lawsuits, and general pressure after they became one of the highlighted representations of corporate greed. At the end of May, Mylan shareholders began revolting against the company’s corrupt board.
The New York City and State pension funds and the California State Teachers' Retirement System are fighting the re-election of six board members at drugmaker Mylan (MYL, -2.52%) and its 2016 executive pay awards, including Chairman Robert Coury's compensation of more than $97 million.
The funds, along with Dutch-based pension fund PGGM, said they control 4.3 million shares of the company and are urging shareholders to vote against the company at Mylan's June 22 annual meeting.
Now another round of “influential” advisors, the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), has joined in saying what we all know—the people running this company are terrible and have got to go.
The ostensible price gouging and greed of the incumbent board led to “significant destruction in shareholder value” and “long-term reputational damage,” ISS wrote in an e-mailed report. In an unusually aggressive move, it urged shareholders to try to oust ten Mylan director nominees, including Chief Executive Heather Bresch, President Rajiv Malik, and Chairman Robert Coury, as well as the compensation committee members.
“All incumbent directors should be considered accountable for material failures of risk oversight over a number of years, when warning signs were available to the company but no actions appear to have been taken,” the firm concluded.
ISS also called for any executive compensation packages offered up by this crew of sharks to be rejected as “egregious.” This comes a week after the New York Times quoted Mylan’s chairman Robert Coury as not only being unrepentant, but sort of a wicked asshole.
In meetings, the executives began warning Mylan’s top leaders that the price increases seemed like unethical profiteering at the expense of sick children and adults, according to people who participated in the conversations. Over the next 16 months, those internal warnings were repeatedly aired. At one gathering, executives shared their concerns with Mylan’s chairman, Robert Coury.
Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment.
These guys cannot get what’s coming to them fast enough. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who overseas the $175 billion NYC Pension Funds released a statement a couple of weeks ago as part of the movement to get rid of people like Mr. Coury.
“Last year was a new low for the Mylan Board. At its core, the EpiPen price-hiking controversy was the costly consequence of a Board with a history of oversight failures. From allegedly overcharging both the government and consumers for its life-saving EpiPen to approving exorbitant pay for its deeply entrenched Chairman, Mylan’s Board has repeatedly enabled self-serving executives at shareowners’ expense. The New York City police officers, teachers, firefighters and other City employees who rely on our pension funds for their retirement security deserve better.
“Oversight and governance responsibilities ultimately rest with the Board — it can’t be a rubber stamp. That’s why we’re urging Mylan’s shareowners to vote against Chairman Robert Coury and five other longstanding directors, and to vote ‘no’ on the pay proposal. There needs to be change,” New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said.
Not only do these directors not need golden parachutes, it would be great if they got iron bcracelets.
