Hi my name is Jean-Jacques Bienaimé I am the Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer of BioMarine. BioMarine is a 20 year old biopharmaceutical company.
Its the anticipated revenues this year in 2017 are around 1.3 billion dollars.
We operating in over 50 countries in the world I joined the company around 12
years ago and the company more specifically is focused on developing
and manufacturing and commercializing drugs for rare genetic disorders.
Disorders sometimes are so rare that in most European countries for the specific
diseases we treat, you are going to find around 50 patients.
The company has been very successful, very innovative. We've been ranked for three years in a row
by Forbes magazine in the top 10 most innovative companies in the world
all industries combined, so we were pretty proud of that.
So let me talk a little bit about the international expansion of Biomarin.
When I joined the company 12 years ago, there were no BioMarin employees outside the U.S.
We had only one product that was marketed by our partner
Genzyme which now belongs to Sanofi and the product was Aldurazyme
for again a rare genetic disorders. We were about to receive approval for our second
product Naglazyme and there were, when I joined the company, advanced
discussions again with Genzyme to potentially have Genzyme commercialized
Naglazyme, outside the US. And, there were some negotiation going on and then, when
I looked at the terms of the deal, I realized that it probably would not be
the best way to maximize shareholder value and I decided to terminate the
negotiations and to keep my rights for Naglazyme which I believe it was
a fundamental decision that allows us to still be an independent company today.
Obviously, it was a pretty bold decision
in the sense that as I said earlier, we had no Biomarin employees outside the US,
so we had to build an infrastructure in Europe and then in the rest of the world
from scratch. So the way we started, I hired seasoned executive in Europe.
I just started with a couple of employees. They were working in an
internet cafe because we had no offices to have access to the internet and
communicate with each other. Eventually, we found a small office and we started
selling Naglazyme, but around the time it was approved in Europe and
before we had final reimbursement pricing negotiations on it was
called the name patient basis so you can sell the product to different
countries like Germany, France, Spain, specifically. Although the plug is not
yet officially approved and start to get some revenues. Eventually, we
ended up hiring some country managers one in each European country to slowly
start building the commercial business and then also we realized that.
Besides the big EU five Germany, France, UK, Spain, and Italy there
were some patients also in Turkey and Turkey is not officially part of
Europe but they want to join the EU and because of the genetics of the disorder,
Turkey is a very large market for us and we ended up doing a lot of business there.
I think it was a fundamental decision, critical decision for the
long-term value of Biomarin and because today 85 % of our revenues
and 85 % of our patients are actually outside the United States.
So, this decision basically exceeded our expectations and led to a major road in
the valuation of the company. When I joined the company 12 years ago the
company was worth about 300 million dollars and, as I think I said earlier, it
is now worth of 16 billion dollars. So our expanding
outside the US was a mainly initially a commercial decision but we also made a
decision in terms of manufacturing. Manufacturing is a very large component
of Biomarin's organization and we had two manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
in California but with the launch of our fourth product Vimizim we needed more
capacity for manufacturing and we decided to go to Ireland and we acquired
a manufacturing facility in Shanbally and in Cork from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals that
facility was basically brand new and never been used by Pfizer and we were
able to acquire it for about 25 % of the cost he would
have taken us to build a facility from scratch. So it was a good acquisition
in terms of pricing and also we could save a lot of time as compared to
building a facility from scratch. Other reasons why we decided to go to Ireland
for this facility was the availability of a highly skilled sales force, a very
favorable business environment. The English language was obviously
helpful for our people here in California to be able to communicate
with those people. So, it was a very good decision in this respect so we
now have a pretty substantial presence in Ireland. We have about 400 people
there between manufacturing and actually we have move our European
and Middle East and Africa commercial operations in Dublin and
we might expand further. We have some offices in London depending on what
happens to the European medical agency following the Brexit decision from the UK.
We might expand further into Dublin from London because, as you probably know,
Ireland is still part of the European Union.
Another key variable in our decision to also acquire this facility in Ireland
was the availability of a very skilled workforce.
So as you can tell Europe is a critical, actually fundamental part of our business and
we have now build a very significant infrastructure over there.
Actually, we are looking into potentially leveraging this organization, specifically the
commercial and medical affairs organization to potentially partner with
other biopharmaceutical company of smaller size, that need a European partner
for drugs that they have been developing for rare genetic disorders.
Prof. Dr. Florence Pinot de VillechenonAssociate Professor
Prof. Dr. Béatrice CollinAssociate Professor
