#bankruptcy

Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Exploring Bankruptcy - Sources | Investing News | US News
▻https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-03-04/exclusive-oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-exploring-bankruptcy-sources
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By Mike Spector, Jessica DiNapoli and Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is exploring filing for bankruptcy to address potentially significant liabilities from roughly 2,000 lawsuits alleging the drugmaker contributed to the deadly opioid crisis sweeping the United States, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The potential move shows how Purdue and its wealthy owners, the Sackler family, are under pressure to respond to mounting litigation accusing the company of misleading doctors and patients about risks associated with prolonged use of its prescription opioids.

Purdue denies the allegations, arguing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved labels for its opioids carried warnings about the risk of abuse and misuse associated with the pain treatments.

Filing for Chapter 11 protection would halt the lawsuits and allow Purdue to negotiate legal claims with plaintiffs under the supervision of a U.S. bankruptcy judge, the sources said.

Shares of Endo International Plc and Insys Therapeutics Inc, two companies that like Purdue have been named in lawsuits related to the U.S. opioid epidemic, closed down 17 percent and more than 2 percent, respectively, on Monday.

More than 1,600 lawsuits accusing Purdue and other opioid manufacturers of using deceptive practices to push addictive drugs that led to fatal overdoses are consolidated in an Ohio federal court. Purdue has held discussions to resolve the litigation with plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have often compared the cases to widespread lawsuits against the tobacco industry that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1998.

“We will oppose any attempt to avoid our claims, and will continue to vigorously and aggressively pursue our claims against Purdue and the Sackler family,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said. Connecticut has a case against Purdue and the Sacklers.

BANKRUPTCY FILING NOT CERTAIN

A Purdue bankruptcy filing is not certain, the sources said. The Stamford, Connecticut-based company has not made any final decisions and could instead continue fighting the lawsuits, they said.

“As a privately-held company, it has been Purdue Pharma’s longstanding policy not to comment on our financial or legal strategy,” Purdue said in a statement.

“We are, however, committed to ensuring that our business remains strong and sustainable. We have ample liquidity and remain committed to meeting our obligations to the patients who benefit from our medicines, our suppliers and other business partners.”

Purdue faces a May trial in a case brought by Oklahoma’s attorney general that, like others, accuses the company of contributing to a wave of fatal overdoses by flooding the market with highly addictive opioids while falsely claiming the drugs were safe.

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump also said he would like to sue drug companies over the nation’s opioid crisis.

Opioids, including prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017, a sixfold increase from 1999, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Purdue hired law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP for restructuring advice, Reuters reported in August, fueling concerns among litigants, including Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, that the company might seek bankruptcy protection before the trial.

Companies facing widespread lawsuits sometimes seek bankruptcy protection to address liabilities in one court even when their financial condition is not dire. California utility PG&E Corp filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after deadly wildfires raised the prospect of large legal bills even though its stock remained worth billions of dollars.

DECEPTIVE MARKETING

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in June became the first attorney general to sue not just Purdue but Sackler family members. Records in her case, which Purdue has asked a judge to dismiss, accused Sackler family members of directing deceptive marketing of opioids for years while enriching themselves to the tune of $4.2 billion.

Some other states have since also sued the Sacklers. The Sacklers are currently discussing creating a nonprofit backed by family financial contributions to combat addiction and drug abuse, a person familiar with their deliberations said.

The drugmaker downplayed the possibility of a bankruptcy filing in a Feb. 22 court filing in the Oklahoma case. “Purdue is still here - ready, willing and eager to prove in this Court that the State’s claims are baseless,” the company said in court papers.

Sales of OxyContin and other opioids have fallen amid public concern about their addictive nature, and as restrictions on opioid prescribing have been enacted. OxyContin generated $1.74 billion in sales in 2017, down from $2.6 billion five years earlier, according to the most recent data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions.

Purdue Chief Executive Officer Craig Landau has cut hundreds of jobs, stopped marketing opioids to physicians and moved the company toward developing medications for sleep disorders and cancer since taking the helm in 2017.

In July, Purdue appointed a new board chairman, Steve Miller, a restructuring veteran who previously held leadership positions at troubled companies including auto-parts giant Delphi and the once-teetering insurer American International Group Inc.

Mortimer D.A. Sackler no longer sits on Purdue’s board, according to a filing the company made with the Connecticut secretary of state late Monday.

The Oklahoma case and other lawsuits seek damages from Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. In addition to lawsuits consolidated in an Ohio federal court, more than 300 cases are pending in state courts, and dozens of state attorneys general have sued manufacturers, including Purdue.

Settlement discussions have not yet resulted in a deal.

Purdue and three executives in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million in penalties, according to court records.

(Reporting by Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Copyright 2019 Thomson Reuters.

#Opioides #Sackler #Bankruptcy

The anniversary of broken promises | Corporate Europe Observatory
▻http://corporateeurope.org/financial-lobby/2013/09/anniversary-broken-promises

The anniversary of broken promises

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September 13th 2013 The financial lobby

5 years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the beginning of the worst economic crisis in decades, the EU has not delivered on promises of strong regulation of the financial sector. A swift overhaul is needed. Together with other organisations (full list at the end), CEO has signed the statement below. 

The 15th of September marks the fifth anniversary of the most spectacular bankruptcy in the financial crisis of 2007-2008. On that day, renowned Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy due to disastrous investments in US real estate through financial products. At the time, European leaders made bold promises to reform financial regulation in the EU “to respond to crises, but also to avoid them in the future”, Commission President Barroso said. Five years on, the results are woefully insufficient.

The financial crisis led to a devastating economic crisis in Europe. Unemployment in the EU has increased steadily to a record level of nearly 26 million – a staggering 10.7% of the labour force with youth unemployment much higher. It also set the euro crisis in motion which has resulted in painful austerity measures in almost all EU countries and hundreds of billions of euros in expensive bailouts of banks that made bad loans in the first place. Having paid such a high price, European citizens have every right to demand effective action from politicians to protect us from a repeat of this meltdown. But after five years of financial ‘reform’ in the EU, the return on our investment is woefully inadequate.

The evidence is clear: European banks continue to be undercapitalised, and EU banking regulation continues to allow banks – such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays – to borrow even more than Lehman Brothers did before it crashed1; derivatives markets continue to grow and now stand at a value much higher than five years ago2; few toxic financial instruments have been banned, not even the complicated securities that played a key role in the crisis.

One key reason for this failure is the success of the financial lobby to keep effective regulation at bay. The financial industry is spending millions to influence decision makers, and scaremongering is their standard argument: they claim that regulating finance would be costly to society in terms of unemployment. However, this is an absurd argument if one looks at the costs of the crisis in 2008, regarding bank bail outs and millions of people losing their jobs.

Financial corporations have enjoyed uninterrupted privileged access to decision makers, for instance in the debate on new rules on banking and on derivatives. As pointed out repeatedly by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU (ALTER-EU) and others, advisory groups of the Commission and the Council were, and are still, dominated by representatives from big financial corporations. A group recently set up to advice the EU on measures to stop tax evasion is full with representatives of the same accountancy industry that is so instrumental in advising companies how they can minimize their tax payments.

#Lehman_Brothers
#financial_industry is spending millions to influence decision makers
#investment is woefully inadequate.
#financial_lobby
to #stop_tax evasion
#regulation of the financial sector
#ftt
#too_big_to_fail
#speculation
#anniversary
#bankruptcy

Global finance: Where’s the next Lehman? | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21584975-five-years-after-maelstrom-september-2008-global-finance-safer-s

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Where’s the next Lehman?

Five years after the maelstrom of September 2008, global finance is safer. But still not safe enough
Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

THE bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, an American investment bank, in 2008 turned a nasty credit crunch into the worst financial crisis in 80 years. Massive bail-outs from governments and central banks staved off a second Depression, but failed to prevent a deep recession from which many rich economies have yet fully to recover. Five years after that calamity, two big questions need to be answered. Is global finance safer? And are more crises on the horizon?

The quick answers are yes, and yes. Global finance looks less vulnerable because reforms to the financial industry have made it more resilient, and because America, the country at the heart of the Lehman mess, has got rid of much of the excess debt and righted many of the imbalances in its economy. Today’s danger zones are elsewhere. They are unlikely to spawn a collapse on the scale of 2008. But they could produce enough turmoil to hit growth hard.

In this section
Fight this war, not the last one
Where’s the next Lehman?
Hunting tigers
The man who showed why firms exist
From dental braces to astronauts’ seats
Reprints
Related topics
EU economy
Central banking
Public finance
Japan
Economic crisis
The three harbingers of the apocalypse
The disaster of September 2008 had many causes, as the first of our series of “schools briefs” (see article). But, put crudely, Lehman’s demise spawned catastrophe because it combined three separate vulnerabilities. The underlying one was a surge in debt, particularly in the financial sector, brought on by a housing bubble. The ensuing bust was made more dangerous because of the second weakness: the complex interconnections of securitised finance meant that no one understood what assets were worth or who owed what. Lehman’s failure added a third devastating dimension: confusion about whether governments could, or would, step in as finance failed. A rule of thumb for spotting future disaster is how far those weaknesses—a debt surge, ill-understood interconnections and uncertainty about a safety net—are repeated.

The overhaul of financial regulation since 2008 has made most progress on the first two. Under the new Basel capital standards banks are being compelled to hold more, and better, capital relative to their assets; the biggest “systemic” banks even more than others. Another strand of reforms, such as pushing derivatives trading onto clearing-houses, has tried to improve transparency. Least progress has been made on what to do when big banks fail—though new efforts to write global rules that would force banks to issue bonds that can be “bailed in” in the event of failure is a promising step.

American finance has become safer. The country’s big banks have raised more capital and written off more dud assets than most others. At around 13%, their risk-weighted capital ratio is far above the new global norms and some 60% higher than before the crisis. American property prices have adjusted and households have cut their debts. Government debt has risen, but most of that rise is the sensible mirror-image of efforts by households to reduce theirs. Now that the economy is recovering, the budget deficit is tumbling. You can find bubbliness in bits of American finance, including the corporate-bond market, and some nasty off-balance-sheet liabilities like student loans and public-sector pensions, but America does not look like a source of imminent trouble.

#Lehman
#Crise
#bankruptcy
#Banqueroute
#Faillite
#Finance
#Economie
#Dette