Shire Pharmaceuticals is the UK’s third biggest drugs company behind GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. It is listed on the FTSE 100 and Nasdaq indices, and has a market capitalisation of £2.25 billion.

Last year Shire, whose main product is the hyperactivity drug Adderall, earned $327 million on turnover of $1.04 billion. About 80 per cent of the company’s sales were derived from the US, the world’s biggest pharmaceuticals market.

However, Shire is still keen to project itself as a global player. It employs a 1,000-strong global sales and marketing team to sell its drugs to doctors and medical professionals in the US, Canada, the UK, Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Recently Shire announced plans to focus its drug development efforts on three main disease areas: central nervous system, gastro-intestinal disorders and renal disease. The new strategy means Shire plans to spin off its loss-making Canadian vaccines business, which has attracted attention from potential buyers.

Who's who in the boardroom

The decision this year by Shire Pharmaceuticals to rewrite its executive contracts to include two years’ pay and bonuses in the event of a takeover proved controversial. The National Association of Pension Funds called it “a backward step”; Shire said the decision was taken “in light of growing business uncertainty in the pharmaceutical sector”.

Those to benefit from the two-year clauses were chief executive Matt Emmens, 51, who joined Shire in March after 29 years at Merck, Angus Russell, the finance director, whose previous roles included 19 years at ICI, Zeneca and AstraZeneca, and Wilson Totten, who became Shire’s research and development director in 1998 after three years as vice-president of clinical research and development at Astra Charnwood.

James Cavanaugh, Shire’s chairman, joined the board as a non-executive director in 1997, moving up to the top job in 1999. A former assistant to the US President on health affairs issues, he is also non-executive director of MedImmune, Diversa Corporation and Versicor.

Other non-executives include James Andrews Grant, a partner with the Canadian law firm Stikeman Elliot and a former director of Biochem, Ronald Nordmann, a non-executive director of Roberts and director of Guilford Pharmaceuticals, Boron, Lepore & Associates and Global Health Associates, Barry Price, chairman of Shire’s remuneration committee, who is also a director of Pharmgene and Chemunex, and Robin Buchanan, also a director of Bain & Company.

Jeff Devlin, a former partner at Ernst & Young, is Shire’s director of corporate affairs, while Tatjana May, the former assistant general counsel to AstraZeneca, is Shire’s company secretary and general counsel.

History

Scientists Harry and Caroline Stratford founded Shire Pharmaceuticals in 1986 in a tiny office above a shop in Hampshire. The husband and wife team developed and sold calcium products designed to help with osteoporosis, the bone disease. (Calcichew remains one of Shire’s products to this day).

Seven years later, Rolf Stahel, then a marketing supremo at Wellcome, was brought in to take the company public. He expanded the group’s specialism to include hormone replacement therapy and Alzheimer’s disease, and acquired the rights to galantamine, later developed into Reminyl, Shire’s Alzheimer’s drug.

Before floating the company in February 1996, Stahel made his first corporate transaction, buying Imperial Pharmaceutical Services, another Hampshire-based biotech company. He then embarked on a shopping spree that transformed Shire. In 1997 came the acquisitions of Pharmavene, which brought the expertise of drug delivery development into the Shire fold, and Richwood, a small US company. The second purchase remains Stahel’s biggest coup, as it captured the top-selling Adderall hyperactivity drug and gave Shire a strong US presence.

Stahel then decided Shire needed to increase its infrastructure in Europe, and in 1999 bought Fuisz and Roberts. This created a network in France, Germany and Italy, as well as adding drugs for cancer and gastro-intestinal disorders.

The $4 billion acquisition of Canada’s BioChem Pharma in 2001 took Shire on to the FTSE 100 index, but was seen by some as a deal too far. Although Shire still insists the purchase made sense, providing it with a hefty royalty stream, it is difficult not to notice that many of the programmes that Matt Emmens, Stahel’s successor, plans to abandon came to Shire from BioChem.

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