Valeant’s biggest shareholder paid a former employee $1000 to get info on Philidor
(Reuters)
A Fulton Hotshot lights a controlled burn on the so-called "Rough Fire" in the Sequoia National Forest, California, August 21, 2015.
Valeant Pharmaceutical's largest investor, the Sequoia Fund, paid out hard cash to speak with former employees at the specialty pharmacy that's been at the center of Valeant's stock price collapse, The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Rockoff and Michael Rothfeld report.
The Sequoia Fund's manager told the newspaper that it paid five former Philidor employees and one current employee for information. Sequoia also offered one former Philidor employee $1,000 to talk for two hours, the WSJ report said.
Valeant's stock has fallen more than 43% since Citron Research, the short-selling firm run by Andrew Left, published a report in October asking whether Valeant was operating an Enron-like fraud.
The report focused on the company's mysterious relationship with Philidor, a specialty pharmacy that distributes prescription drugs for Valeant. Citron pointed out that Valeant is the only supplier to Philidor, and it also has an option to buy the company. On Wall Street, no one had really heard of Philidor until last month.
Read the full Journal report here.
Phantom sales
Citron accused Valeant of using Philidor to book "phantom sales."
Valeant has denied any wrongdoing. The company has also now severed ties with Philidor.
Sequoia, the $7.5 billion mutual fund managed by Robert Goldfarb and David Poppe, has been a long-time shareholder of Valeant.
Ruane, Cunniff, and Goldfarb, which runs the Sequoia Fund, last held 33.88 million shares, or a 9.8% stake, according to regulatory data compiled by Bloomberg. The investment makes up 28.7% of the mutual fund's portfolio.
Despite Valeant's massive decline, Sequoia's managers have defended the company.
"This has caused an extraordinary level of pain, made worse because the most serious allegation leveled against Valeant — that it set up specialty pharmacies as a way to create fraudulent sales and inflate its reported growth rate — is false. As an academic case study, Valeant would be fascinating. As a real life experience, it hurts," the mutual fund's letter to shareholder said.
The mutual fund first got into the stock in the third quarter of 2010, according to Bloomberg. For a long time, the stock had been a huge winner for them.
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