Pfizer says absorbing Wyeth at top speed

By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler said the drugmaker is integrating its Wyeth purchase far faster than previous big acquisitions, and it will no longer be overly dependent on one or two blockbuster medications.

Speaking at the Reuters Health Summit on Wednesday, Kindler said Pfizer has melded and reshaped its research and development facilities within 20 days of buying Wyeth on October 15. With previous huge mergers, he said, that process had taken "literally years."

"The primary lesson we've learned over the years is how important it is to act very quickly and very decisively," he said, referring to slow prior integrations of U.S. drugmakers Warner Lambert and Pharmacia over the past decade.

Pfizer earlier this week said it would close six R&D sites and trim jobs in the United States and Britain following its $67.3 billon acquisition of Wyeth. It plans to reduce the square footage of its research sites 35 percent.

Swift reorganization of the two companies' research operations stands in contrast to "the distractions, the disruptions and the delays that have plagued mergers of our company and others in the past," Kindler said.

He acknowledged that Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, has been overly dependent on the world's top-selling drug -- its nearly $12 billion-a-year Lipitor cholesterol fighter, which will face U.S. generic competition in late 2011.

The Wyeth deal "definitively addresses" Pfizer's need to bolster itself ahead of the U.S. patent expiration on Lipitor, he said.

Kindler said in the future "no one product will represent more than 10 percent of revenue" at Pfizer. Lipitor now accounts for 25 percent of Pfizer's annual revenue.

While developing its now-bigger array of experimental drugs, Kindler said Pfizer will continue to license or buy medicines and acquire other drugmakers.

"We will have all the resources we need to do all the business development deals we need; that will not be a challenge for us," he said.

He also said the company would like to collaborate more with other drugmakers in order to share the risk of costly drug development, even though it also would mean sharing profits.

Kindler did not signal whether Pfizer's pace of dealmaking would change following the Wyeth merger. "It's really opportunistic; we don't have any predetermined view on that."

He said he hates to pick favorites but has a "particular passion" for drugs that might be able to tackle Alzheimer's disease. "Society has not adequately addressed this terrible disease and I'm excited about the possibility that Pfizer has a fair chance of making a significant contribution" in that fight, he said.

Pfizer is conducting late-stage trials of Dimebon, an Alzheimer's disease treatment licensed from Medivation Inc, and bapineuzumab, a Wyeth drug.

Kindler said pain is another highly promising therapeutic area and Pfizer is developing "potential breakthrough" treatments.