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  • Lipitor Sucessor Fails!

    Pfizer, world’s largest drug maker, got hammered badly in the NYSE on Monday following the disclosure that it had pulled the plug on its “to-be” blockbuster drug, torcetrapib. The stock lost 11% of its market value and wiped out USD 21 bn off its market cap.

    Though some might consider this as excessive, this just goes to show what one drug can do to a company’s fortune. Pfizer banks on Lipitor for almost a quarter of its annual USD 51 bn sales and a higher percentage of its profits. With Lipitor patent coverage expiring in 2011 (thanks to Ranbaxy), torcetrapib was supposed to take its place and drive the company’s growth and profits. Pfizer had spent over a billion USD on the development of the drug and pulling it out at the last stage of development has prompted Moody to reconsider the downgrading of Pfizer’s rating from the present Aaa.

    Also interesting is the increase in the share prices of its competitors, namely, Roche and Astra Zeneca. Many also expect that this failure might change the way big companies focus on blockbuster drugs to drive both topline and bottomline growth.

  • Poetry – Pablo Neruda

    Read a lot of Neruda poems in the past few days. Here are some lines I liked.

    Poetry

    And it was at that age…Poetry arrived
    in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
    it came from, from winter or a river.
    I don’t know how or when,
    no, they were not voices, they were not
    words, nor silence,
    but from a street I was summoned,
    from the branches of night,
    abruptly from the others,
    among violent fires
    or returning alone,
    there I was without a face
    and it touched me.

    Saddest Poem

    I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
    My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

    Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
    belonged to my kisses.
    Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

    I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
    Love is so short and oblivion so long.

    Love Sonnet XVII

    I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
    I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
    so I love you because I know no other way

    in which there is no I or you
    so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand
    so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close

    ~Pablo Neruda~

  • Return of the IT!!

    The IT department of our company had been lying low for pretty long now, and I was kind of caught napping when they moved. Last time they did something stupid I wrote about was in February.

    Digg was officially blocked by them late yesterday night. Though I agree that it does not contain business related information for us, but it is huge source of up to date IT knowhow and throws up tools every now and then which help work in several ways. One more “Message Boards and Clubs” dies a silent death. There will be only a few people who will mourn this but I am bewildered at the nonsense behind this all.

    Someday, which I doubt will come, I hope they realise their mistake and understand that in a time when Web2.0 is the buzzword and collective knowledge sharing by people online (e.g., Wikipedia) is a huge hit banning such websites will only prove negative for them.

    PS: This comes at a time when our department is all gripped by a new internal initiative which promises to change the way we work by the use of AJAX etc. Now this is called irony!!

  • Don’t Dance So Fast

    Was reading through Dexterous Doings, when I came across these lines.

    When life is zooming by and we’re caught up in it all, the pigeon reminds me to slow down, relax, take it easy. Actually enjoy the moment we are in right now. It’s the only one we’ve got.

    Reminded me a lot of two things. First, an email forward claiming to be poem from a terminally sick child. Whatever be the truth behind the mail, the poem, Slow Dance, is one of my favourites.

    You better slow down
    Don’t dance so fast
    Time is short
    The music won’t last

    Next, it reminded me a great deal of the song “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker” by Sandi Thom.

    When music really mattered and when radio was king,
    When accountants didn’t have control
    And the media couldn’t buy your soul
    And computers were still scary and we didn’t know everything

    Seems like we focus too much on the destination and forget to enjoy the journey. As they say, the problem with rat race is, that even if you win you are still a rat.

  • Sleep Over It

    Okay. This is one wierd post. Even I don’t know why I am writing this crap.

    Don’t you sometimes think that the concept of night is way over rated??

    I studied in a school which was affiliated to the ICSE Board of Education. Under its syllabus was a story (don’t remember the name though) about a man stuck in a storm and a beggar woman, who gives him the support needed to spend the night, stuck in a room on a railway station, when everything else gives way. It was during the course of our discussion on this story that our teacher, (one of my all time faves!!) Ms. Gulati, told us how night gives us the time and peace to recuperate from all that we have gone through the day. Similar sentiments were echoed by Mr. Thapa (again a gem of a teacher), and there I was, a believer in the necessity of the night in our lives.

    But now when I stop to think, I feel that the theory is flawed some where. During the day, you can keep your thoughts off stuff, not think about things you don’t want to. You seem to, at least temporarily, forget certain things which would otherwise be hard to dismiss. You think you are in control. But then one night, one dream, and everything comes crashing back. You again have to face the situations you did not want to face. You have to answer questions you always tried to evade. And why, because you have no control over how the subconcious brain functions while you are asleep.

    I wish I had control over things I dream about. That would have made life so much more easier. Night, definitely, is highly over-rated, much like our Indian cricket team.