[flatbutt]

The very last job of my career lasted 18 years and involved three corporate entities. SmithKline French, SmithKline Beecham and finally Glaxo SmithKline. I worked in the R&D leg of the OTC Division. We did real healthcare science there, but over my time there I saw divestitures that just didn't make sense to me. Not from a longevity PoV at least.

Just before I retired GSK entered into a joint venture with Novartis that had us taking over their OTC division, but it wasn't a JV as I knew it. One in which two entities combined efforts to launch a new product. Instead we became a new entity, still GSK OTC but not really. There were strategic facility closings that didn't speak to strengthening the division and a nearly 20% headcount reduction. I said at that time it felt like we were being formed into a fatted calf or positioned to be a separate company. I commented that I didn't think we'd exist much beyond 2020 in our current form. I had the chance to git and so I did.

Earlier this year I heard rumblings of yet another JV, this time with GSK and Pfizers OTC. It was similar to the Novartis deal, 68% GSK 32% Pfizer and while I haven't heard about force reduction I did read that the entire division will released as a separate entity by 2022.

The OTC division made most of it's money with a few big products in Oral Care, GI and tobacco cessation products plus handling OTC switches from lapsed NDAs. Plus we got serious R&D funding from Big Papa Rx. In this new form this "fatted calf" will be ripe for poaching, if anyone really wants to deal with OTC at all. Or it may be sold off piecemeal one good product at a time.

I guess I don't have much of a point to make other than to say that it sure does seem that there may well be two or three Big Pharma entities running the whole show one day. How many banks will there be? How many food producers?

I had a good run and I'm grateful for that but there are a lot of young scientists there that may become gig jobbers with PhDs. How do you care for a family like that? My generation is likely the last one to have made a good living with a BS and a bunch of experience.

Was it a Woody Allen movie that posited the notion big business ruled the world, not government?