Profits

I believe I've talked about this before but I wanted to bring it up again to talk about making money in biotech. This is from Red Orbit:

Nov. 2--Senior executives at Icos are in line to receive cash payments worth a combined $67.8 million for selling the company to Eli Lilly, according to a filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

At the top of the list is Paul Clark, 59, Icos chairman, chief executive and president, who will receive a "golden parachute" worth $23.2 million in severance pay, cashed-out stock options, restricted stock awards and other bonuses for retention and closing the deal.

Others cashing out big include Executive Vice President Gary Wilcox ($8.5 million), Chief Financial Officer Michael Stein ($7.1 million) and Chief Medical Officer David Goodkin ($5.9 million).

Rank-and-file employees of the Bothell-based company will not fare nearly as well.

I've also talked about a major investor, Healthcors plans to vote against the sale of ICOS. But I wanted to talk about another lucky devil, Greg Weaver of SIRNA. SIRNA, you will remember was bought out by Merck for 1.1 billion bucks. Mr. Weaver had left Nastech in 2005 "to pursue other opportunities." He landed the CFO gig at SIRNA six months before the Merck take-over. Damn the luck, he was out on his ass again. How much did he leave with? Four million dollars!

Now here's the hard part of being an executive. His replacement at Nastech came from ICOS. Doh! Phil Ranker left ICOS after being passed over for a promotion. Now he's making good money but nothing makes an executive feel better than a multi-million dollar payday. What did Greg Weaver do right? He was fired from Nastech. What did Phil Ranker do wrong? He quit ICOS.