Valeant CEO's Outsider Roots Spun Market Gold, Until They Didn't
- 'He's a polarizing figure, no question,' Piper's Ansellem says
- His unconventional approach came under attack by lawmakers
Digging Into Valeant: Are We Seeing 'Phantom' Revenue?
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Michael Pearson was practically swaggering, and he had reason.
His audience, heavy-hitting Wall Street investors, had come to hear the man who’d rewritten the rules of Big Pharma -- and, in the process, made a lot of people very rich. At the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, Pearson, the driving force behind Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., gave a frank assessment of old-line drug giants and why his company was different. “The world’s changing,” Pearson told the crowd in May 2014. “And when fundamental change occurs in an industry, it usually comes from the outside, and that’s what we’ve tried to construct Valeant to be.”