Challenged by a reader to prove that Confucius would have opposed today’s Chinese familial political corruption despite his stress on filial piety, I was not short of citations. Here is the best:
“Choose the right people. If you put honest men above the dishonest, the people will have confidence in the government. If you put the dishonest above the honest, you will lose their confidence.
“But first of all there must be no greed in you yourself. Then those under you will not steal.â€
(Michael C. Tang, A Victor’s Reflections: China’s Timeless Wisdom for Leaders, Prentice Hall 1999.)
Today I am facing an embarasse de richesse in my corporation’s outside-managed profit-sharing account. An American Depositary Receipt (ADR) it holds, which I refused to buy or write up, is now a 10-bagger. The stock is Shire plc, the Irish drug-maker notorious for flooding the world with a nostrum for attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, handed out like popcorn to young minority-group boys who misbehave in school.
Today in UK trading SHP rose nearly 14% on news that it had rejected a £27.25 bn takeover bid from AbbVie, allegedly undervaluing SHP.
The outside manager of my company’s profit-sharing account is FIC Capital Inc. I will introduce any reader who wants an outside wealth manager firm focused mainly on US shares to my son the CFA who is a fund manager and director at FIC.
More follows from Britain, China, Holland, Israel, Ireland, Japan, Mexico and Portugal, including a new stock pick.
*Buy Alkermes, ALKS, at under $50 to gain from the rush by US pharma and medical device companies into low-tax Ireland by merging with local companies. ALKS is not evil; it is a drug company with a serious product against schizophrenia which earlier this week was presented at the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology conference. Its Aripiprazol lauroxil, ALKS 5461 injected monthly in two dose sizes, has just aced phase III clinical trials with statistically and clinically significant cuts in the marker for schizophrenia symptoms, called Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale Scores (PANSS). In the lower dose, PANSS fell just under 11%; in the higher dose just under 12%. It plans to file a new drug application with the US FDA in Q3. It also has another schizophrenia drug in its pipeline, an oral drug called ALKS 3831.
ALKS is also doing trials for ALKS 5461 to treat major depressive disorder. Of course Aripiprozole lauroxil is patented, and uses Alkermes’ proprietary LinkeRX technology. ALKS has about 20 low-margin commercial drugs it makes for other pharma companies. It also boasts a significant central nervous system drug pipeline. HQ’d in Dublin, it does research and production in Athlone and Waltham (MA) and has US plants.
