Not Your Typical Brusk Seller: The Stigler Middle Hosts Fahmi Quadir

Note: this upshot was held Nov 12 together with this post is a placeholder/aide-mémoire until I tin acquire my hands on a transcript.
From the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business' ProMarket blog, Nov. 9:

Quadir, known for betting against Valeant inwards 2015, volition speak over curt selling, exposing corporate fraud together with thriving inwards a sometimes-reviled manufacture lacking multifariousness inwards a conversation with Luigi Zingales.

In the summertime of 2015, Valeant Pharmaceuticals—a cite at ane time synonymous with corporate greed—was even hence the darling of Wall Street. At ane signal a small-scale together with struggling pharmaceutical company, Valeant had managed to propel itself into a $90 billion marketplace cap past times doing away with the traditional pharma describe of piece of job concern model, which typically involves heavy R&D spending. Instead, the society went on an acquisition spree, purchasing dozens of smaller drug manufacturers together with hence drastically hiking the prices of their existing drugs.

For a while, this strategy paid off for Valeant. Its stock rose past times to a greater extent than than 4000 per centum betwixt 2008 together with 2015, peaking at $262. Prominent investors, with them Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, bet billions of dollars on the society together with championed its CEO, J. Michael Pearson, with about fifty-fifty far from the alone one. 

Fahmi Quadir, hence a 25-year former equity analyst at the New York hedge fund Krensavage Asset Management, didn’t purchase the hype. Quadir, who inwards college majored inwards mathematics together with biology, recognized the unsustainable nature of Valeant’s describe of piece of job concern model and, inwards June 2015, pushed her employers to curt the stock. While Valeant’s stock peaked that August, past times Oct it was inwards gratuitous fall: Valeant’s price-gouging tactics had caught the attending of SEC launching investigations into its drug pricing strategy together with its ties to a mail-order chemist's called huge mistake.” Earlier this year, the beleaguered society attempted a Enron of pharma.” ...

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