Pfizer Inc. (PFE) Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said he won’t seek large deals to replace falling revenue, as the world’s biggest drugmaker loses patent exclusivity to drugs responsible for 60 percent of yearly sales. “We are not going to chase revenue at the destruction of capital,” Read said today in a telephone interview. “We have geographic breadth, we have portfolio breadth, we have technology breadth. We never say never, but I don’t see why we would need that.” Read has been shrinking the company by selling units and buying back shares, in contrast to his predecessors Jeffrey Kindler, who bought Wyeth for $64 billion in 2009, and Henry McKinnell, who bought Pharmacia for about the same price in 2002. Pfizer will still form partnerships and pursue companies with treatments in mid- to late-stage testing, Read said.
