ICN pharmaceuticals: Corporate governance analysis

Abstract

ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (today Valeant Pharmaceuticals International) was a drug developer and manufacturer, known in the medical field for its development of Ribavirin, an antiviral compound used to treat various viral infections. However, ICN will probably be remembered mostly as an example of problematic and inefficient corporate governance. Changes in the management structure of ICN occurred almost at the same time when corporations, like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, were dealing with financial scandals caused by problems in corporate governance. Since ICN was not a powerful corporation and found a way to deal with its problems, it was not subject of any big financial scandal. Nevertheless, it is interesting how ICN managed to operate, in some years even successfully, with so many corporate governance problems and how Milan Panic managed to stay at the top of ICN for 42 years, in spite of his numerous expensive law suits, scandals and bad decisions.