Drug makers telling Greeks to pay upfront

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The European debt crisis is hitting close to home for Bay Area pharmaceutical companies, with unpaid bills from Greece, Spain and Portugal piling so high that some drugmakers are now insisting on payment upfront.

Genentech Inc., Gilead Sciences Inc., BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc and Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. are among the companies waiting for millions of dollars from cash-strapped southern European countries, according to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

At BioMarin, Greece’s inability to pay for its products has the company requiring that the Greek government pay for all drug purchases upfront, said Stephen Aselage, the Novato-based company’s chief business officer.

“Greece pays us in advance, more than a year in advance,” Aselage said. “It’s fairly rare that we would set that up.” Due to the centralized health care system in Greece, most BioMarin products are bought directly by the Greek government.

Bio-Rad co-founder, chairman David Schwartz dies at 88

David Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of one of the Bay Area’s oldest life sciences and family-run companies, Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., died Sunday, the company said. He was 88.
Schwartz and his wife, Alice, founded Bio-Rad, a Hercules-based maker of research and clinical diagnostic products (NYSE: BIO), in Berkeley in 1952. The company remains family run despite growing into a publicly traded and profitable operation that last year registered net income of $178.2 million on sales of more than $2 billion.

Scenes, thoughts from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

If the Occupy Wall Street folks wanted to shut down biotech’s biggest wheeling-and-dealing session, the 30th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, couldn’t they just contact the San Francisco fire marshal?
The Occupy movement supposedly was the reason J.P. Morgan asked the Westin St. Francis for additional security for the conference this week. Badge-checkers were at their usual stations inside the hotel but also were moved outside of the hotel, creating more logjams than usual on the sidewalk along Union Street.
Folks staying at the hotel had to show their room keys, so the security crush significantly cut down “clock tower” meetings in the hotel’s lobby. Coupled with the unusually good January weather, Union Square became the preferred chat-up locale, to the point that the park was overrun by posses of (mostly) men in black suits.
All in all, the mood seemed less dreamy, more serious. Even last year, life sciences companies still in shock from the financial crisis seemed like zombies: “Must focus portfolio … arrrrrgh … Be virtual … ugh.” They walked the talk, but they didn’t really seem to mean it. This year, the companies indeed were focused, their milestones tangible.

Bio-Rad buys digital PCR developer QuantaLife for $162M

Life sciences research and diagnostics equipment developer Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. bought QuantaLife Inc. for at least $162 million cash, the company said Wednesday.
QuantaLife, based in Pleasanton, has developed a system for digital PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, that can help detect rare mutations.

Bio-Rad Labs earns $68M in Q4, $185M for year

Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. earned $67.9 million in the fourth quarter, up from a profit of $37.9 million a year earlier in the December quarter.
An “extraordinary” $10.7 million tax benefit in the fourth quarter helped push up earnings. Bio-Rad benefitted from repatriation of foreign earnings and an extension of a U.S. tax credit. Otherwise its fourth quarter tax rate would have been 25 percent.