Boost­ed by boom­ing sales of its Covid-19 an­ti­body bam­lanivimab, Eli Lil­ly post­ed dou­ble-dig­it growth in 2020 de­spite a more steady show­ing from its lega­cy port­fo­lio. In his fourth year at the helm, CEO David Ricks will tout 2020 as a win — par­tic­u­lar­ly for his pock­et­book.

Ricks se­cured $23.7 mil­lion in pay in 2020, a rough­ly 11% bump from the pre­vi­ous year, the In­di­anapo­lis drug­mak­er dis­closed in a proxy fil­ing with the SEC.

Most of that bump was tied to in­creas­es in Ricks’ pen­sion val­ue as well as his stock awards. The four-year helms­man snared $13.6 mil­lion in stock, or about $1.3 mil­lion more than 2019. Ricks’ base salary saw a small in­crease to $1.48 mil­lion — a lit­tle more than the $1.4 mil­lion flat he bagged in 2019.

In a year light on trav­el, Ricks al­so racked up about $40,000 in cor­po­rate air ex­pens­es, Lil­ly said, which in­cludes pay­ing the crew, fu­el­ing and “on-board cater­ing,” among oth­er fees.

It was a big year for Ricks as Lil­ly over­saw the de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of LY-CoV5555 (bam­lanivimab), a Covid-19 an­ti­body that is one of few mol­e­cules ap­proved for emer­gency use in the US. On the year, bam­lanivimab snared $871 mil­lion in sales — near­ly a block­buster de­spite what has been less-than-stel­lar up­take for an­ti­bod­ies across the board.

With bam­lanivimab in the fold, Lil­ly saw a 10% in­crease in sales in 2020 to $24.54 mil­lion. But out­side of its an­ti­body, the pic­ture at Lil­ly is a lit­tle less clear. Bam­lanivimab not in­clud­ed, Lil­ly’s sales jumped just 6% on the year — well with­in range for Big Phar­ma but not quite the dou­ble-dig­it growth that catch­es eye­balls.

Anat Ashke­nazi

Ricks is al­so like­ly sting­ing from the ouster of his CFO Josh Smi­ley, who was kicked out of the com­pa­ny this month — and stripped of around $24 mil­lion in pay — for an “in­ap­pro­pri­ate mes­sages” scan­dal with oth­er em­ploy­ees. Lil­ly said Smi­ley will be “avail­able” to Ricks and new CFO Anat Ashke­nazi through Ju­ly of this year on re­duced bi­week­ly pay of $9,000. Lil­ly will still hold on to its 24-month non-so­lic­i­ta­tion agree­ment in Smi­ley’s con­tract as well as an 18-month non-com­pe­ti­tion pact.

Smi­ley was Ricks’ hand­picked ap­pointee for CFO back in 2017 as the then-new CEO looked to re­work Lil­ly’s stag­nant busi­ness plan. One of Lil­ly’s home­grown suc­cess sto­ries, Ricks start­ed on with the drug­mak­er back in 1996 as a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment as­so­ciate be­fore steadi­ly ris­ing through the ranks over the course of 25 years.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.