Category Archives: Valeant

Who is Allergan?

Allergan is the Company who makes BOTOX

Allergan is the company who makes BOTOX, Latisse, and Juvederm.  These are three popular products offered at Surgical Artistry.  Latisse is a take-home product, unlike BOTOX and Juvederm which are injected (by Dr. Calvin Lee).

logo_allergan

Allergan cosmetic products

Allergan is also regarded as an ophthalmic (eye) pharmaceutical specialty company

Allergan makes many other pharmaceutical products – many of them are for the eye – conditions such as dry eye.

Eye Products include:

  • Restasis
  • Lumigan
  • Acuvail

How many Billions in sales for Allergan?

  • It is estimated that Allergan has $7 billion in sales in 2014

Advertising spending for Allergan?

  • In 2012, it is estimated that Allergan spent 162 million in advertising.

Allergan Location?

Headquarter is in Irvine, California

Allergan Merger?

Allergan plans to merge with Actavis.  The battle for Allergan started in April 2014 when Valeant made a bid for Allergan.  Actavis plans to pay $66 billion for Allergan.  Brent Saunders is the CEO and president of Actavis.

For more information about Allergan including the CEO’s BLOG.

  • Allergan home page – this is a great place to start learning about Allergan.
  • AllerganViews: The CEO of Allergan has a blog.  “Our Pursuit, Life’s Potential.” That is Allergan’s vision, and every day, around the globe, our more than 11,000 employees work to deliver on this vision.  David Pyott is the current CEO, as of the writing of this blog which is Dec 10, 2014.
  • Allergan on Twitter
  • Allergan also runs the Brilliant Distinctions program.  Click here to log in direction to Brilliant Distinctions.

Links For Physicians and Nurses who inject Botox and perform Breast Augmentation

Visit Surgical Artistry in Modesto, CA

That’s our BOTOX and Plastic Surgical Practice in Modesto, CA

Latisse as an adjunct to BOTOX eye treatments

How to use Latisse – scroll to video

BOTOX around the eyes

BOTOX can be used to accentuate the eyes by lessening the wrinkles around the eyes.  Two areas of FDA approved usage of Botox around the eyes would be for the Glabellar complex and for the crows feet.

What if the eyelashes were accentuated?

Enter Latisse!

Latisse would make the eyes really stand out beautifully by allowing the lashes to grow longer, thicker and darker.  There’s much discussion to Latisse.  Consider visting the official Latisse website.   Or one of our Modesto Latisse webpages.   And there’s more information about us at our Modesto Botox webpage.

Picture from Allergan.  She is not an actual patient of Surgical Artistry's.
Picture from Allergan. She is not an actual patient of Surgical Artistry’s.

If the eyes are windows to the soul.  Eyelashes are some pretty impressive window treatments.

Latisse comes in a 3ML or 5ML kit.  But Latisse kits are usually not sold at your local Hunter Douglas window covering dealers.  You can find them in doctor’s offices, such as ours in Modesto, CA.

Please visit our Botox practice in Modesto, California and we’ll show you some of our own personal tips regarding Latisse.

Here’s a Video regarding applying Latisse – the video is made by Allergan.  Allergan is currently in the process of merging with Actavis.  Valeant apparently is no longer in pursuit.

Credits and Disclaimers:  Latisse picture is not from an actual patient of ours.  Please visit your doctor in person for medical advice and for personalized details regarding Latisse and BOTOX.

Allergan Merger / Actavis Takeover

BOTOX wars

The Botox company, Allergan, has consented to be bought by generic pharmaceutical maker, Actavis for $219 a share.  This gets in the way of the hostile takeover attempts led by Valeant Pharmaceuticals and hedge fund man, Bill Ackerman of Pershing Square Capital Management.   But it might be possible for Valeant to out-bid Actavis?

66 Billion? That’s a lot of Botox.

According to the sources, this take-over by Actavis, is worth $66 billion.

botox-bottles-botox-blog-2.jpg
My precious! (picture by Calvin Lee, MD Botox injector in Modesto, CA)

Who is Actavis?

In the past two years, Actavis has purchased Forest Laboratories and Warner Chilcott.   Actavis’ CEO is Brent Saunders.  He used to run Forest Laboratories.  Actavis is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and has administrative offices in New Jersey.

Who are the losers? Nobody?

Pershing Square Capital Management owns 9.7% of Allergan shares.  Valeant indicated that it may not try to beat Actavis’s offer.  Bill Ackerman and Valeant stand to benefit from the increased share price for Allergan; thus they wouldn’t lose either way.

My thoughts

This is a win-win-win for the three A’s:  Actavis, Allergan, Ackerman.  And it also seems to be a win for Valeant who will get 15% of Ackerman’s profits from the price increase in Allergan’s stock (which he owns nearly 10% of Allergan stock).  I also think it will be a win for Botox injectors and consumers.  Actavis will try to be more efficient with it’s administration of Allergan – with further cost cutting and unification of efforts.  And they have pledged to continue to have research and development within the Allergan family of products.  And most importantly in the end, I think the consumers (and doctors) will benefit.  I feel that the Valeant/Allergan merger (Vallergant – I’ve called it), might have cut too many costs and we’d lose on research/development.  Thus the new merger of Allergan and Actvis – there would be a better balance with continued research and developement.  So it will be a 6 way win-win-win-win-win-win:  Actavis, Allergan, Ackerman, Valeant, doctors/Botox-injectors, and patients.  That’s how you do mergers!   I certainly hope so.  Time will tell, and I hope to be here to talk about it.

 

Sources:

Link to Allergan goes with Actavis instead of Valeant / Ackerman

Ackerman/Valeant walks away from Allergan

Wikipedia article on Actavis

Allergan and Valeant – Letters against the possible “Vallergant” merger

On April 24, 2014, Dr. Tammy Wu wrote a letter against the idea of the possible merger of the Allergan Botox giant along with the skin care / cosmetic giant Valeant.  This was 2 days after Valeant had proposed a merger with Allergan – or possibly a hostile takeover?

While this merger may make some sense since there is many crossover items – basically competition could be eliminated with this type of corporate merger.  But we have been afraid that customer service will be hurt as will future research and development.  Esepcially with our beloved Botox.

Allergan just published on their website about 100 of the 500 letters they have received from their physician customers.  This is the link to the letters from physician customers to Allergan – all of these are against the idea of the “Vallergant merger”.  I figured it’s a cute name for combining the companies.

Dr. Tammy Wu’s letter is among those 100 published.  In fact, I think in reading them, she was the first one to write.  Perhaps she sparked a flurry of letters to Allergan.

This is her letter:

Dear Mr. Schaison:

As a physician who has experienced the “Valeant” service, I have to say that I am not impressed with them.  Specifically, our office had enjoyed a great relationship with Obagi Medical Products (OMP) and have done business with them for many years. As you may be aware, Obagi was acquired by Valeant last year.

Since the merger/ acquisition, every aspect of OMP has gone down the tubes. Customer service, billing service, product quality control (we receive leaking products and broken products almost with every order – which had never happened before when Obagi was independent), shipping control, timing of delivery of products, etc. have all been negatively affected. The poor OBagi representative has to backtrack and apologize almost on a regular basis for all the mishaps that have happened since the merger.

Allergan has been a leader in aesthetic products and more, and I hope that Allergan will stay independent and have no affiliations with Valeant. I respect Allergan for its research and development aspects, and I believe the future is quite bright for Allergan as an independent company.

I hope that the Board of Directors will take into consideration as much as possible the implications of this merger and what it will do to the reputation of Allergan – in my opinion, if it’s the same as Obagi and Medicis, it will only be negatively affected. We stopped using Medicis products as a result of bad customer service, and we are currently considering eliminating Obagi from our office as a result of all the mishaps.

Thank you for reaching out to us physicians. I know that I am not the only physician hoping for a positive outcome from this, which would be Allergan Independence, no Valeant involvement.  Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,

Tammy Wu, MD

Diplomate, American Board of Plastic Surgery

Surgical Artistry, Inc.

2336 Sylvan Avenue, Suite C

Modesto, CA 95355

Some Background info:  Allergan has the products that we carry: Latisse, Juvederm, and Botox.  It also has SkinMedica.  Valeant has Obagi, Restylane, Perlane, and many other dermatologically related items.

I would like to mention that Obagi has tried to improve on it’s customer service since we had initially complained, but it is a different culture, it seems at Valeant, and I do think that some change is unavoidable.  But we hope to adapt and get used to the new culture.  And we’ll probably adapt too, if Allergan and Valeant were to become combined.

Visit our Modesto Botox home page.

Actavis update

UPDATE: Valeant didn’t end up merging with Allergan.  Actavis ended up being the company which merged with Allergan.