Brent Saunders, chief executive and architect of the “new” Allergan PLC, stayed on the go during a visit to Orange County earlier this month.
The 45-year-old Saunders—whose name is already being floated as a potential chief executive of an entity that could emerge as talks on a combination of Allergan and New York-based Pfizer Inc. proceed—had expected to spend “roughly every other week” in OC. He sketched out that schedule shortly after Actavis PLC bought Allergan Inc. for $72.5 billion earlier this year. The new Allergan has a tax-friendly headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operations based in Parsippany, N.J., and two of its key business lines—medical aesthetics and eye care—centered in Irvine.
Saunders took his OC presence up a notch this month, hosting Allergan’s annual research and development day at the drugmaker’s Dupont Drive campus in Irvine (see related story, page 1), as well as serving as a keynote speaker during a medical device investor forum presented by Aliso Viejo-based nonprofit Octane at the Hotel Irvine.
“Today, we are a leader in seven therapeutic areas,” Saunders said at the forum. “To sustain that leadership, we have to be committed to innovation.”
Saunders and James Mazzo, an Allergan veteran who is now chief executive of Irvine-based eye startup AcuFocus Inc., chatted about the first year after Actavis stepped in with its friendly offer for the maker of Botox and other drugs, ending a long-running hostile takeover attempt by Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and activist investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP.
The Customer
“When I think about legacy Allergan, I think one of the things that made it a special company was really [focusing] on customers,” Saunders said. “From [founder] Gavin [Herbert] to [retired Allergan Inc. Chief Executive David Pyott], there was always a strong tone at the top that customer [focus] was absolutely critical.”
“Gavin taught that to every one of us—the customer’s the most important person,” Mazzo added. “Without the customer, there is no company.”
Saunders and Mazzo hit a range of topics, including how to digest a big acquisition.
An acquirer needs to “figure out, ‘Why did you buy the company in the first place and then stay true to that?’ ” Saunders said.
“Take, for example, facial aesthetics—we’re far and away the undisputed leader in facial aesthetics and aesthetic medicine,” Saunders said. “My goal in the integration was not to mess that up and impose [legacy Actavis’] way on that business.”
Actavis didn’t have an aesthetics business before it acquired Allergan, according to Saunders.
“We didn’t understand anything about it,” he said, adding that when a company such as Allergan is bought, “you don’t have to mess with it.”
Another topic that came up was how the then-Actavis approached its buy of Allergan.
“We came in as a white knight—that was important for us,” Saunders said. “[While] we’ve done a lot of deals, we only do friendly deals. We thought we could help save a great company that was unfairly targeted.”
Saunders said he’s been coming to Irvine “every two or three weeks. I feel pretty good at that cadence since we’ve done the deal. Obviously, I like coming here more in the winter,” he said.
Saunders didn’t just talk integration and other topics. He drew laughs from the audience by sharing a story about a meeting he had with Pyott and members of Allergan’s sales force while Actavis was wrapping up the acquisition.
Pyott “said to me, ‘Would you be willing to come and speak to the Allergan sales force?’ ” Saunders recalled, adding that Pyott later called and told him, “I thought it would be really neat if we gave you a shot of Botox on stage.”
Saunders ended up on a stage with a doctor who “had a full plan for the face. It was about 20 Botox injections, a bunch of fillers, and the whole nine yards with a camera stuck on my face,” he said, adding that he received the injections about nine months ago and has not been re-treated.
