The drug industry is usually out front in assisting disaster relief, and many manufacturers have already come forth with major donations of money and supplies to Haiti in the aftermath of this week's earthquake.

Abbott will donate $1 million and says it has donated drugs that are already "on the ground" in Haiti. 

Two of our favorite shows to cover during the fall conference season are the ISPE and AAPS annual meetings. Unfortunately, this year they came at exactly the same time. As ISPE kicked off earlier this week in San Diego, AAPS goers were flying into LA just up the coast.

If you put credence in Swiss firm Covalence's annual ethics rankings, yes, GSK, BMS, and J&J are the most ethical companies in the Pharmaceuticals and Biotech sector. The list looks like this:

1. GSK

2. BMS

3. J&J

4. Abbott

5. Novartis

6. Roche

7. Boehringer Ingelheim

8. Astra Zeneca

9. Pfizer

The Leadership Sphere blog just reviewed the classic business book "Good to Great," with some insights on leaders and one pharma industry leader in particular.  The best leaders combine personal humility with intense professional will and resolve.  Read the entire post, excerpted below:

They set up successors for success, make sure that those who follow them are poised to continue a successful path or to exceed the expectations that result from that success, and they are compellingly modest. In contrast to the very I-centric style of some other leaders, Level 5 leaders do not typically talk about themselves, preferring to direct attention to other individuals, or to the results of the company as a whole. They don't aspire to be larger-than-life heroes, or to be placed on a pedestal. They are seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results

When George Cain became CEO of Abbott Laboratories, the company occupied a lowly space in the pharmaceutical industry. Cain didn't have an inspiring personality to galvanize the company, but he did have a steadfast intolerance for mediocrity; good was simply not good enough. He destroyed the company's most glaring causes of its mediocrity - nepotism - by rebuilding the board and executive teams with the best people available, not just those who had family connections or had been with the company longest.

Pharmaceutical Executive Editor Patrick Clinton wrote about the changing of the guard and the company's current CEO's objectives a while ago.  

One question I have for Abbott Labs' public relations team.  Why are you so unresponsive to inquiries from the industry trade press?  Ditto for BMS.  I don't mean to single out these two companies, because it's true for many pharma companies in general. At a time when pharma companies and the industry are in need of inspiring stories, the biggest hurdle that many of us journalists have to clear is often the corporate P.R. department. Maybe it's time to change this approach. 
-AMS

From the corporate governance group, The Corporate Library...

CEOS UP $1.26 BILLION, SHAREHOLDERS DOWN $330 BILLION

The Corporate Library’s latest study of executive incentive compensation practices finds in its five-year analysis that twelve large U.S. companies display the most pronounced gap between pay and performance. Within this group, the boards’ compensation committees authorized a total of $1.26 billion in pay to CEOs who presided over an aggregate loss of $330 billion in shareholder value.
Each of the twelve companies earned a High Risk rating from The Corporate Library; paid their CEOs in excess of $15 million in the last two available fiscal years; brought a negative return to shareholders over the last five years; and underperformed their peers over the same period. "While there are a few companies in this year’s Pay for Failure report that also featured in the first report published in 2006, there are seven new companies, many of them suffering from the same compensation faults," said the report’s author, Senior Research Associate Paul Hodgson.

This year’s Pay for Failure companies are:

• Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.
• Dell Inc.
• Eli Lilly and Company
• Ford Motor Company
• Home Depot, Inc.
• Pfizer Inc.
• Time Warner Inc.
• Verizon Communications Inc.
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
• Abbott Laboratories
• Qwest Communications International Inc.
• Wyeth
The complete study examines in detail the incentive policies at each of the twelve companies, finding high proportions of fixed pay, poorly-chosen performance metrics, and rewards for below-median performance. The report also looks at the makeup of the compensation committees at the companies, listing the members by name, along with their compensation.

For more on this, from Reuters, click here.

Abbott Lab's long-anticipated biopharma plant came online in Puerto Rico earlier today.  Here's how the event was reported on PRNewswire.