No Peace For Milan Panic

Within Yugoslavia's aspiring Serbian business community, Milan Panic is a folk hero. Not only did he escape the shackles of Communism early by defecting to the U.S. in 1955, but he also transformed himself into a millionaire pharmaceutical executive--perhaps the richest Serbian in the world. "He's a well-known and very popular name in Belgrade," says Nebojsa Vujovic, first secretary of the Yugoslavian Embassy in Washington. "He possesses a vast knowledge of the working market economy."

Too vast, in the opinion of some federal regulators and Wall Street investors. On the way to building ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. into a $460 million international drug company, Panic (pronounced PAHN-ish) has been investigated twice by the Securities & Exchange Commission for securities-law violations. And last year, he settled a civil action brought by the U.S. Justice Dept. alleging that ICN overstated the potential of one of its compounds as an AIDS drug. Neither he nor ICN has admitted guilt in any of these cases. Some investors defend the 62-year-old Panic as an aggressive visionary. But his management has spurred numerous shareholder suits, and his own board has censured him for misuse of corporate assets (table). Panic was unavailable to be interviewed for this article.