Eugene Melnyk - Business Career

Business Career

In 1982, Eugene Melnyk founded medical publishing company Trimel Corporation, which was sold to Thomson Publications (part of The Thomson Corporation) in 1989. Melnyk then founded Biovail Corporation, a specialty pharmaceutical company, in 1989. During his time as chairman and CEO of Biovail, revenues grew from $19 million in 1995 to $1.067 billion in 2006. One of Biovail's strategies was to look for drugs with expired patents, then reinvent them with the company's proprietary technologies. One example was producing drugs that had controlled-release features that let patients take the drug once a day instead of several times. Melnyk retired from his position as chairman and CEO of Biovail on June 30, 2007.

In 2003 a Biovail trucking accident destroyed a shipment of drugs, and Biovail executives overestimated the loss. When the actual earnings were released, the loss was much lower and earnings were positive. This caused shareholder frustration and legal actions. Although the Ontario Securities Commission in Canada found that Eugene Melnyk didn’t violate any of the province’s securities laws in the way he handled an earnings warning at Biovail in 2003, on May 2011, the OSC settled with Eugene Melnyk; the settlement prevents his taking senior roles at public companies in Canada for five years and imposes a $565,000 fine. Earlier in the same year Melnyk had settled with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing to pay a civil penalty of $150,000 US, and he had previously paid $1 million U.S. to settle other claims with the SEC.