How to earn $50 Million in 6 years!

A TRUE EXAMPLE OF UNETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICE
US drugmaker Pfizer will pay a massive $USD 2.3bn (£1.4bn) fine in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice. A subsidiary of the firm was found guilty of illegally promoting four drugs for uses which had not been approved by medical regulators.

This link is an amazing interview with John Kopchinski - the Pfizer employee who 'blew the whistle' on Pfiser. In it he describes the unethical and illegal practices used by the firm to sell its products.

Mr Kopchinski's decision to tell the authorities what his bosses asked him to do cost him his job... but this article tells you that it all ended OK for him!

Pfizer agrees record fraud fine

This article is a good example to use as support for various important BaM topics –

a) An example of the dangers of poor marketing strategy. Pizer has been fined for off-label promoting – that is – for promoting its products for uses that had NOT been approved by its external regulator (the US Federal Drugs Agency)

b) An example of possible diseconomies of scale – Pizer is the worlds largest drug producer: as such the business hay have suffered communication problems in making sure that the ruling by the FDA clearly prevented the firm from promoting its products for non- approved usage

c) An example of effective contingency planning – Pizers share price has remained unaffected by this news because the company had already put aside money to cover any fines in its 4th quarter in 2008