Bristol-Myers Squibb - Scandals and Allegations

Scandals and Allegations

The company was involved in an accounting scandal in 2002 that resulted in a significant restatement of revenues from 1999 to 2001. The restatement was the result of an improper booking of sales related to "channel stuffing", or the practice of offering excess inventory to customers to create higher sales numbers. The company has since settled with the United States Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay $150 million while neither admitting nor denying guilt.

According to an FTC consent order filed in 2003, the company

engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts over the past decade to obstruct the entry of low-price generic competition for three of Bristol's widely used pharmaceutical products: two anti-cancer drugs, Taxol and Platinol, and the anti-anxiety agent BuSpar. Bristol avoided competition by abusing federal regulations to block generic entry; deceived the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to obtain unwarranted patent protection; paid a would-be generic rival over $70 million not to bring any competing products to market; and filed baseless patent infringement lawsuits to deter entry by generics.

The company has also been sued in this matter by state attorneys general to recover monetary damages.

As part of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, the company was placed under the oversight of a monitor appointed by the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey. In addition, the former head of the Pharma group, Richard Lane, and the ex-CFO, Fred Schiff, were indicted for federal securities violations.

An investigation of the company was made public in July 2006, and the FBI raided the company's corporate offices. The investigation centered around the distribution of Plavix and charges of collusion.

On September 12, 2006, the monitor, former Federal Judge Frederick B. Lacey, urged the company to remove then CEO Peter Dolan over the Plavix dispute. Later that day, BMS announced that Dolan would indeed step down.

The Deferred Prosecution Agreement expired in June 2007 and the Department of Justice did not take any further legal action against the company for matters covered by the DPA. Under CEO Jim Cornelius, who was CEO following Dolan until May 2010, all executives involved in the "channel-stuffing" and generic competition scandals have since left the company.