Apple Introduces iBook 2 to Help Boost IPad in Schools

January 19, 2012, 11:34 AM EST By Adam Satariano

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc., the world’s largest technology company, introduced a new product to make digital versions of textbooks available on the iPad.

The new service is called “iBooks 2” and is intended to help make textbooks more interactive and searchable, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing, said today at an announcement in New York. More than 1.5 million iPads are being used for educational purposes, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cecile Daurat at cdaurat@bloomberg.net

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Dell Names Felice Chief Commercial Officer to Boost Sales

January 07, 2012, 5:50 AM EST By Aaron Ricadela

(Adds closing share price in final paragraph.)

Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Dell Inc. named Steve Felice president and chief commercial officer, overseeing all its sales and marketing efforts as the company aims to sell more packages of technology products and services to businesses.

Felice had been president of the world’s third-largest personal-computer maker’s consumer and small-and-midsize business sales and will now head all corporate, consumer and government units, Dell said in a statement. Paul Bell, who ran sales to large businesses and governments, will retire in March.

The moves are designed to help Dell develop and market groups of products that better meet customers’ needs, the company said. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell is seeking to transform from a low-cost PC maker into a broader supplier of computing devices, data-center equipment, software and technology services.

“This is still a company in transition,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. in San Francisco, in a telephone interview. Felice, who headed the company’s Asian operations until 2010, may help as it seeks more sales outside the U.S., Wu said. “He definitely has a track record of execution,” said Wu, who rates the shares “neutral.”

Broadening Business

Dell, which is competing in markets for servers, storage, networking and technology services with Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc., has used acquisitions of companies such as Perot Systems Corp. to expand in those areas.

Felice, 53, joined Dell in 1999. In 2010, Dell moved him from Singapore to its Texas headquarters to manage sales to small-and-midsize businesses, and last year gave him the company’s low-margin consumer PC business. Profit from the consumer arm has improved as Dell has pared back its product line and walked away from price battles with rivals.

Bell, 51, may pursue more personal philanthropy, said spokesman David Frink. Bell, who was president of the company’s large enterprise and public-sector units, joined Dell 15 years ago.

Frink said Felice wasn’t available for an interview.

Dell gained 1.1 percent to $15.34 at the close in New York trading. The shares rose 8 percent last year.

--Editors: Niamh Ring, Stephen West

To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Ricadela in San Francisco at aricadela@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

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Teva’s Levin May Boost Branded Drugs as Copaxone Threat Looms

January 03, 2012, 6:45 AM EST By Naomi Kresge

Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- After helping Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. acquire new drugs in a bid to offset the expected loss of revenue from its top-selling blood thinner Plavix, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s chief executive officer- designate Jeremy Levin faces the same task at the Israeli drugmaker.

Levin, 58, will replace retiring Teva CEO Shlomo Yanai, 59, in May, the Petach Tikva-based company said yesterday. Teva, the world’s biggest maker of generic drugs, needs new sources of sales as its No. 1 drug, a branded multiple sclerosis medicine called Copaxone, faces competition from newer treatments.

Yanai is stepping down after Teva’s shares last year plunged the most since 2006. A former Israeli army general with no previous pharmaceutical experience, he sought to broaden Teva’s portfolio of innovative medicines with the $6.5 billion acquisition of U.S. biotechnology company Cephalon Inc. last year, then told investors in December that Teva may not meet its long-term target of $31 billion in sales by 2015.

“He’s the perfect guy for this,” Ori Hershkovitz, a Tel Aviv-based partner at Sphera Funds Management Ltd., said of Levin in a phone interview yesterday. “If Jeremy can do one or two good product selections as he has done in the past for Bristol-Myers, that will be very, very good for Teva.” Sphera owns Teva shares.

Teva rose 3.3 percent to 160.60 shekels at the close in Tel Aviv yesterday, the stock’s biggest increase in two months. The more actively traded American depositary receipts lost 21 percent in 2011 including reinvested dividends, compared with an 11 percent return for the Bloomberg EMEA Pharmaceuticals Index.

‘Orderly Transition’

Levin, a Cambridge University-educated physician who worked at New York-based Bristol-Myers as senior vice president for strategy, said in a press conference in Tel Aviv yesterday that he will work closely with Yanai to achieve an “orderly transition.”

“There are some parallels between Bristol-Myers from a few years ago and Teva,” Les Funtleyder, a New York-based portfolio manager for Miller Tabak & Co., said in an e-mail yesterday. “BMY had to come up with a new strategy to deal with slow sales and looming patents.”

At Bristol-Myers, Levin helped oversee the so-called “string of pearls” policy of partnerships and smaller acquisitions to replace revenue that will be lost when Plavix, a blood thinner, faces generic competition in the U.S. this year. Analysts predict the drug had $7.2 billion of sales in 2011, based on the average of three estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Potential Targets

Fruits of the policy include Yervoy, a skin cancer drug gained in the 2009 acquisition of Medarex Inc., Hershkovitz said. The strategy has generated 17 acquisitions and agreements with smaller companies so far.

Levin also handed off drugs Bristol-Myers didn’t plan to develop itself to partner companies in emerging markets, in what he described as an “oyster plan” to build its partners into potential acquisition targets.

“The oysters are being seeded to help create innovation,” Levin said in an interview last month, comparing the Bristol- Myers strategy to the process used to create pearls. “What you’re hoping is that they’ll create an engine of innovation, and then we can do a transaction. Over the years to come, we’ll position ourselves as partners of choice.”

Bristol-Myers won’t change its string-of-pearls strategy, Jennifer Mauer, a spokeswoman for the New York-based drugmaker, said in a phone interview. “We have a very strong and experienced team in that role,” she said. “Business development remains a priority.” Levin left the company Jan. 1, she said.

‘His Decision’

Teva started looking for Yanai’s replacement during the course of last year, Chairman Phillip Frost said at a news conference in Tel Aviv today. He declined to be more specific.

Yanai wasn’t asked to retire, said Denise Bradley, a Teva spokeswoman. “Shlomo came to the board with his decision, and the board accepted it, appreciating his considerable contributions to Teva but recognizing his desire to move on,” Bradley said by e-mail.

“The time has come to start a new path,” Yanai said at the news conference. “I intend to use all my knowledge, ability and experience for the good of Israel’s industry, economy and society.”

Yanai is considering both public and private possibilities, Frost said. The executive may be weighing an entry into politics, Gilad Alper, a Tel Aviv-based analyst for Excellence Nessuah Brokerage, said in an e-mail yesterday.

Conference Call

Teva plans a conference call for analysts at 8:30 a.m. New York time today.

Teva announced Dec. 21 it would buy back as much as $3 billion of its shares to return money to investors. The $31 billion sales goal for 2015 is “aspirational,” Yanai said then.

Analysts suggested the share buyback might herald a pullback from a streak of acquisitions that in recent years included Germany’s Ratiopharm GmbH and Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. of the U.S.

Teva said last month sales of Copaxone probably will peak this year at $3.8 billion. The injected MS drug accounted for 24 percent of Teva’s $4.34 billion of revenue in the third quarter.

Copaxone contributes as much as 40 percent of Teva’s earnings, Alper said by phone. “The company will need to do something dramatic relatively quickly.”

Novartis Competition

The medicine is already facing competition from Novartis AG’s Gilenya, the first oral drug for MS. Biogen Idec Inc. reported that its own experimental MS pill, BG-12, is safe and reduces the risk of relapses in a late-stage trial in October. BG-12 may generate as much as $3 billion in annual sales, according to analysts with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Teva’s own experimental MS pill, laquinimod, disappointed in two trials last year.

The South African-born Levin was global head of business development and strategic alliances at Novartis from 2003 to 2007. He has worked as a practicing physician and has a medical degree from Cambridge and a doctorate from Oxford University in molecular biology, according to the statement. Levin is a citizen of both the U.S. and the U.K.

--With assistance from Shoshanna Solomon in Tel Aviv, Mike Millard in Seattle, Aya Takada in Tokyo, Makiko Kitamura in London, Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem and Drew Armstrong in Washington. Editors: Phil Serafino, Chris V. Nicholson

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Kresge in Berlin at nkresge@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net

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Japan’s NEC to Boost Brazil Sales by 30% This Year, Ugajin Says

July 04, 2011, 7:38 PM EDT By Jose Sergio Osse

July 5 (Bloomberg) -- NEC Corp. plans to increase sales in Brazil by 30 percent this year, boosted by rising demand as the country prepares to host the World Cup and the Olympics, said the company’s top executives in Latin America.

“Our new development area will focus in providing for the basic infrastructure sector in the country, both public and private,” Herberto Yamamuro, chief executive officer of NEC’s Brazilian unit, said in a July 1 interview in Bloomberg’s office in Sao Paulo. The company aims to reach sales of $325 million in the South American country this year, he said.

NEC, Japan’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker, expects Brazil will be its fastest-growing market this year, followed by China, said Tadashi Ugajin, chief executive officer for Latin America, in the same interview.

After growing 7.5 percent last year, the fastest pace in more than two decades, Brazil’s economy will expand 4 percent in 2011, according to the country’s central bank quarterly inflation report, published June 29. Rising personal income and infrastructure spending ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games are making Brazil a priority for NEC, the executives said.

For this year, NEC expects to expand 20 percent on average throughout Latin America, Ugajin said.

Imported Labor

A lack of workers in Brazil is the major challenge for NEC to meet its expansion targets this year and 2012, according to both executives.

“The biggest bottleneck today is the lack of the labor force, qualified and unqualified,” said Yamamuro. “Salaries are high and there’s a deficit of people in the market.”

To overcome the problem, the company has been importing professionals from other countries in the region, such as Argentina and Colombia. According to Ugajin and Yamamuro, Brazilian skilled workers are either retired or working abroad.

--Editors: Laura Price, Helder Marinho

To contact the reporter on this story: Jose Sergio Osse in Sao Paulo at josse1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Francisco Marcelino, mdeoliveira@bloomberg.net

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