Talk:Róbert Wessman

Expanding the page
request edit Hi everyone – following the deletion discussion it was remarked that the page could stand to be expanded. Can I please suggest the following changes for consideration? Again, in the interest of transparency, I have a connection with the article subject, so please let me know if you need anything else in terms of sources etc

It is probably accurate to include "entrepreneur" in the lead, and the "Early life" section only needs a tiny bit of copy-editing for flow with no changes to citations etc:


 * Wessman was born in Reykjavík on 4th October 1969 to Wilhelm Wessman, a business person and Ólöf Svafarsdóttir Wessman, a beautician.[6] He grew up in Seltjarnarnes and moved to Mosfellsbær when he was six years old. He went to school at Menntaskólinn við Sund and received a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Iceland in 1993. After graduating, he worked for Samskip for seven years, first in the finance department, then in the sales department before finally serving as the CEO of the firm and moving to Germany.[7] During that time he also taught mathematics on a part time basis at the University of Iceland.[6]

The “Phamaceutical career” section might more accurately be titled “Career in the pharmaceutical industry”. I have arranged my suggestions by company name if that helps with clarity and structure, and suggested a summary so people can get the gist quickly. Much of the material is from the existing page so existing citation numbers ie [1] refer to the current page, and I will list new suggested citations within the text for clarity. The heading tags should probably be H2 and H3 on the page itself.

Career in the pharmaceutical industry
Wessman has spent the majority of his career in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly the generics and biosimilars sectors. He is best known as the CEO of four companies, Delta and later Actavis, Alvogen and Alvotech. His strategies for growing these companies have been the subject of three Harvard Business School case studies. (https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/808127-PDF-ENG?Ntt=actavis)

Delta and Actavis
In 1999, Wessman was appointed CEO of Delta, a small struggling, generic drug manufacturer (https://www.europeanceo.com/business-and-management/robert-wessman-bringing-success-to-struggling-businesses/). Following a merger with another Icelandic pharmaceutical company, Pharmaco, in 2002, Delta was rebranded as Actavis in 2004. (reuse Europeanceo.com) Over an eight-year period, share prices increased by around 55% each year, and Actavis grew to be a multibillion-dollar business which expanded from Iceland into 40 countries. (reuse Europeanceo.com) By 2008, when Wessman stepped down from his position as CEO of Actavis (https://www.abnnewswire.net/press/de/55285/Changes-At-The-Helm-Of-Actavis-Group.html), it was the fourth largest global generic company in the world. (https://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Article/2005/10/19/Alpharma-acquisition-boosts-global-position-for-Actavis)

Wessman’s time at Actavis was documented in a 2008 case study published by Harvard Business School, entitled ‘Robert Wessman and Actavis’ “Winning Formula”’. (https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/healthcare/harvard-business-school-publishes-a-case-study-robert-wessman-and-actavis)

Alvogen
In 2009, Wessman founded the biotechnology company Alvogen, which is headquartered in Vatnsmýri in Reykjavík. Wessman established the company with a global focus, (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-96044-9_12) beginning by purchasing US manufacturer Norwich Pharmaceuticals as a platform to enter the American market while simultaneously expanding into the emerging Asian and Central and Eastern European markets. Operations were established in 35 countries with a portfolio of 50 products by the end of the first year. (https://www.worldfinance.com/markets/the-story-of-alvogen-and-the-founding-of-a-pharma-empire)

With Wessman acting as Executive Chairman and CEO, Alvogen would go on to acquire multiple companies around the world, including Lotus Pharmaceutical in Taiwan, (https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/alvogen-takes-67-stake-in-lotus-pharma) and DreamPharma, based in South Korea. (https://www.genengnews.com/news/alvogen-acquiring-dreampharma-for-187m/)

In 2018 Morgunblaðið published a report showing that one third of the Alvogen's share belonged to a private firm that Wessman had established on the offshore island of Jersey in 2015.[13]

Alvotech
In 2013, Wessman founded Alvotech, a company focused on manufacturing biosimilars rather than generic drugs.

Alvotech was established in 2013 and invested over $500 million in the development of its biosimilar pipeline. (https://generics.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/-/media/supporting-documents/generics-issue-pdfs/2016/generics-no-264-20160507.pdf) Most of the company’s advanced programs are biosimilars to Humira and other biologics (https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/alvotech-lines-up-capital-for-a-biosimilars-ipo), and its first products are expected to reach the market in 2022. In December 2021, Alvotech announced that it would go public through a SPAC transaction, raising another $450 million to fund operations and the launch of its first products. (https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/biopharma-company-alvotech-go-public-225-bln-spac-deal-2021-12-07/)

In March 2021, Wessman was cleared by the board of Alvogen Group of inappropriate conduct after a former executive alleged abusive and bullying behavior by Wessman over a period of years.([15]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-29/drugmaker-ceo-cleared-after-former-executive-alleged-bullying)

In a statement to Bloomberg, the executive alleged that he had "personally experienced and witnessed numerous instances of inappropriate behavior by Wessman". (reuse bloomberg.com)

Shortly after the publication of these allegations, Wessman issued a statement expressing his disappointment that the motivation for the accusations was financial. (https://www.visir.is/g/20212091155d) In April 2021, Alvogen sued the former employee for alleged breach of confidentiality.[16]

Thank you for looking these over and please leave a response here or on my Talk page if you have any comments. Noemimanical (talk) 12:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking the time to partially implement the request; do you have any thoughts on the other parts? Noemimanical (talk) 15:18, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I haven't had time to fact check the rest of the sources and text but was planning on doing so in the next few days. I did find conflicting sources on whether he founded or bought Alvogen in 2009. This 2009 article from Morgunblaðið states that he bought a controlling part of the company through an investment fund in 2009 and that it was previously owned by Procter and Gamble. Alvaldi (talk) 20:39, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I can see that there has been some reverting on the main page - can I respectfully ask that everyone decides what is promotional/unecessary on the Talk page before acting directly?

From Alvaldi's comments they clearly have a good understanding of the topic, if maybe not as much Wikipedia experience as Wallyfromdilbert, and I think it's fair to discuss the changes they decided to upload from this request rather than reverting them.

Details like profits and coverage by case studies can absolutely be relevant to a businessman's career, and may even be why certain Icelanders are aware of Wessman. If there's sourcing issues maybe I can help!Noemimanical (talk) 11:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Update: I have a final comment to add to this request which might help clarify some things.


 * The headquarters of Alvogen, as stated in the Infobox, is New Jersey in the US, not Vatnsmýri in Reykjavík.
 * Citation 18, the Nordic Life article, is a dead link because the content was withdrawn by Nordic Life Sciences.
 * I also hope the following article is helpful: https://kjarninn.is/skyring/andsetnar-strategiur-i-stridinu-innan-alvogen/

Thank you all for your time and happy holidays! Noemimanical (talk) 13:57, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Suggesting replacement of ill-sourced "controversy" over Alvogen share ownership with up-to-date public information There is an old reference under 'Controversies' that has never made much sense: In 2018 Morgunblaðið published a report showing that one third of the Alvogen's share belonged to a private firm that Wessman had established on the offshore island of Jersey in 2015.[36] Private companies are not required to publish their ownership structures, and in this case Morgunbladid did not publish what they found either - just reported what they were interested in reporting, and a Jersey company was supposedly a scandal, though they never said why. In any case, we have no documentation here, don't know why this is convtroversial, and it is now likely out of date in any case. What we know is that Wessman has a private equity and holidng company called Aztiq that is under his leadership and apparent control and does say what it owns stakes in. I think a reference to that and a link under the Alvogen paragraph would be much more wiki compliant and useful and illuminating to readers. I will try to gather some information and thoughts on Aztiq to do this, and in the meantime please let me know of any thoughts or objections to this line of thinking. Lehmansson (talk) 01:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)