Trump Deal Continues to dog Novartis
An ill-advised “advisory” deal with the personal attorney of US president Donald Trump continues to plague Swiss drugmaker Novartis. Two weeks ago the company made headlines when the transaction was uncovered during an investigation into the lawyer’s alleged pay-off of a porn star.
The Novartis affair has come home to roost in particular on the company’s former CEO Joe Jimenez, who authorized the agreement to sink $1.2 million into a contract that purportedly would have given the company the president’s ear.
The US financial newspaper Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said plans for seating Jimenez was on the board of directors of top-line hedge fund Bridgewater Associates have been put on hold indefinitely. The slip-up has also sent the company’s then-general counsel Felix R. Ehrat forced into an unexpected early retirement.
According to reports, Bridgewater, which manages about $150 billion in assets for about 350 clients subscribes to "radical truth and radical transparency" in its business dealings, which could be a talking point against taking the former Novartis chief on board.
In an interview with US Forbes magazine, Jimenez – who, along with Ehrat has taken responsibility for the lapse – blamed “the speed with which we were moving” after Donald Trump’s election. He conceded the drugmaker “should have done more due diligence” rather than let itself be distracted by the heated rhetoric of the post-election discussion over drug prices and the repeal of the US Affordable Care Act that would have guaranteed healthcare for the previously uninsured.
Jimenez told Forbes that Novartis' legal team executed the deal “without anyone who could have questioned the process,” but said remarked that despite realizing it was a mistake the company decided it would be cheaper to continue making monthly payments of $100,00 than terminate the contract early.
“If we were the experts on policy, he (Cohen) was the expert on the way that they think,” Jimenez told Forbes. The reasoning was that, “together as a team it could be a way for us to better navigate what was going to be a pretty sticky Affordable Care Act repeal-and-replace," he added.
