An­a­lyst pens a barbed note to Bio­gen: Shed cau­tion, dump Alzheimer’s and re­tool at the top — go bold

The re­views of Bio­gen CEO Michel Vounatsos’ Q1 call with an­a­lysts and his first steps to­ward deal­ing with the cri­sis the big biotech is in are start­ing to ar­rive. And they don’t look good.

Se­nior SVB Leerink biotech an­a­lyst Ge­of­frey Porges thinks it’s time for some big changes at Bio­gen $BI­IB. And those 3 new ad­di­tions to the board the com­pa­ny an­nounced on Mon­day? That can on­ly be just the first, mod­est step to­ward re­tool­ing its “no­to­ri­ous­ly cau­tious board­room,” the man­age­ment team and the whole R&D strat­e­gy at a bell­wether biotech that bad­ly needs to get start­ed do­ing some bold, high lev­el M&A.

On the board and ex­ecs, Porges says it’s time to see some heads roll and new faces come in­to the pic­ture.

While the new di­rec­tor nom­i­na­tions are a step for­ward, we would al­so like to see the key di­rec­tors and chair­man an­nounce re­tire­ments from the board, and ul­ti­mate­ly changes in strat­e­gy, di­rec­tion, and man­age­ment, to give us con­fi­dence that a much need­ed turn­around is un­der­way. Oth­er­wise these dis­tin­guished di­rec­tors run the risk of mere­ly dress­ing up the same cau­tious strat­e­gy and phi­los­o­phy that al­ready pre­vails at the com­pa­ny.

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