Talk:Thermo Fisher Scientific

Mergers and acquisitions

 * (Contributed by User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:42, 27 September 2008 (UTC))

Review by expert in business
I am an expert (retired) in biotechnology business.

I used to write for McGraw-Hill's Biotechnology Newswatch, which was a $700/year newsletter that covered the biotechnology business in its heyday, for readers who were scientific, financial, and marketing executives at major pharmaceutical companies and venture-stage small biotech companies, government regulators, academic scientists, lawyers, etc. I wrote a column called "Biobusiness," about mergers and investments, and I covered biotech patents. I also used to write for Genetic Engineering News and more magazines than I can remember. I went to some of the labs, and tested for a few genes.

Thermo-Fisher is a science and technology company. This entry has almost nothing about the science and technology. My readers were interested in, and I wrote about, 2 things: (1) the business and financial side of companies and (2) the science behind the companies. Most of our competing financial magazines just covered the business and financial side. (I remember interviewing the CEO of a small biotech company that just got a big dose of investment funds. He sent out a press release which said that they were working on "a protein." I asked, "which protein?" He said, "Oh, I didn't think anybody would be interested." As I recall, it was a nucleolar protein, and he explained to me why it was important.) The most important thing about Thermo Fisher is their science and technology.

Thermo-Fisher without technology is like Hamlet without Hamlet.

BTW did you mention that they are trying to produce 5 million tests for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19? https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/14/thermo-fisher-to-produce-millions-of-coronavirus-diagnostic-tests/ You know, the test that is overdue and vitally needed to manage the epidemic that according to some experts could kill 500,000 Americans? The test that some WP:RS say could cost Trump his re-election?

When I worked at McGraw-Hill, their financial reporters told me that the best place to start researching a publicly-traded company was their 10-K form, which is an annual report without the bullshit, and is a copyright-free public filing which can be found at https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/97745/000009774520000009/tmo-20191231.htm This form is pretty accurate because it's reviewed by teams of lawyers, and they can be sued by shareholders if it has material false statements. OTOH they do have a certain amount of promotional bullshit, like "Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer," so there is some room for editing. (I guess that's to distinguish them from the oil and coal companies, whose mission is to make the world diseased, dirty and dangerous.)

To write this Wikipedia entry, I would skim the table of contents and start with "Item 1. Business" which gives you a good, accurate, meaningful summary of their business, which I think is best summarized by their four business segments -- "Life Sciences Solutions, Analytical Instruments, Specialty Diagnostics, and Laboratory Products and Services." Don't know what that means? The summary then goes on to describe each of those segments in language that an ordinary investor should be able to understand. You could basically rewrite that summary, eliminating some of they hype, and condensing it substantially. Then you could add new information from WP:RS about significant products (like SARS-CoV-2 tests, duh.), competitors, customers, marketing, regulatory issues, lawsuits -- all the things that investors and almost anyone with an interest in Thermo-Fisher would be interested in.

(In my case, I was wondering why it was taking 2 months for the usually competent CDC to come up with a test for SARS-CoV-2, when the Chinese are cranking out 1 1/2 million a week, so I wanted to drill down and see who made them and what the technology was. Isn't that what Wikipedia is for?)

***

Since you're asking for "attention from an expert in Business," I guess I should critique the entry, even though there's no way to do that without hurting somebody's feelings.

First, this entry is almost entirely a catalog of acquisitions and mergers. I used to write about acquisitions. The business community was very interested in them at the time of the acquisition. For example, they wanted to know how much a company like that was worth, or how it changed the business environment. But after that, the fact of the acquisition or merger isn't that important. The important thing they're interested in is how it fits into the business. The worst way to handle it is in a chronological list. In Wikipedia terms, I think it would violate WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

For example, "In May 2011, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. bought Phadia to expand in testing for allergies and autoimmune diseases for €2.47 billion ($3.5 billion) in cash purchase." I used to write stories just like that. As my editor used to say, "Who cares?" (That's not a rhetorical question.) That seems to be part of their Specialty Diagnostics segment, as part of their immunodiagnostics line. Who cares? If you're a doctor whose patient has a problem that's difficult to diagnose, and you think it may be an autoimmune disease, that's who cares. If Thermo Fisher is collecting diagnostic tests to distinguish between these tricky autoimmune diseases, that's what matters. What's the technology -- a monoclonal antibody or something else? What are the other ways to diagnose these diseases? Who are their competitors? Those are the questions that WP:RSs such as trade journals discuss.

There is a strategy to the development of this business, and to all these acquisitions and mergers, and Thermo Fischer explains that strategy in their 10-K. As they say, "Our global team of more than 75,000 colleagues delivers a unique combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through our industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon."

Unless you fit these mergers into a meaningful pattern, it's just an indiscriminate catalog of data.

I must admit that when I click on the hidden table of "Thermo Fisher Scientific Acquisitions", it is interesting to see all the companies that I grew up with that are now part of Thermo Fisher, and that's probably a good way to handle it.

But I would rewrite the whole section on "Acquisition history" from scratch. Instead of listing news accounts of acquisitions, I would want a WP:RS (most easily the 10-K) to describe the pattern of their acquisitions. Same with the list of brands. If it's not important enough to have a blue-linked Wikipedia entry of its own, it's WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

If I were rewriting the article, I would give prominence to their SARS-CoV-2 test, and organize the rest of the article around that. The SARS-CoV-2 test is a dramatic example of their work, but more generally it's representative of their work in clinical diagnostics (DNA and monoclonal antibody diagnostics), and also leverages their expertise in high throughput sequencing. They're making medical products that save peoples' lives (against infectious diseases like AIDS, and EBOLA; autoimmune diseases like arthritis and systemic lupus erythmetosis (they sold a division that did cancer testing). Their tests can let a patient take a blood test rather than get a biopsy. They're making analytical products for basic research, like DNA sequencers that make it possible to sequence the entire genomes of viruses, humans, and bats, and figure out the evolution and functions of parts of the body. Their forensic tools are used to solve murders and rapes.

It's hard to write a boring story about Thermo Fisher. (Although by turning it into an indiscriminate catalog of acquisitions and mergers, you might have done it.)

So that's my critique. Remember -- you asked.

I'm tempted to do it myself. But I've had a problem with Wikipedia. I don't want to spend an afternoon, or a day, writing a Wikipedia entry as I've described above, and (for example) have someone come along and revert it. I don't want someone to decide that a section on their SARS-CoV-2 test was too long and cut it to a sentence. I don't want to have someone who doesn't understand copyright law blank my work as a supposed copyright violation. I don't want to have someone who think he WP:OWNs the page revert everything I do. And I don't want to have 2 editors gang up on me in an edit war.

So I'd like to know what people think. I'm willing to work on it but I need the support of the Wikipedia community. So, tell me what you think. --Nbauman (talk) 00:35, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Nbauman, Wikipedia is sorely lacking in its coverage of companies in general, this is not unique to Thermo Fisher. For example, I discovered not long ago that a S&P 500 component, Steris, was lacking an article altogether. This is likely due at least in part to Wikipedia's demographics. If you want to improve the article, I would be interested in helping you with the updates. And your efforts could certainly be used in WP:Companies if you have the bandwidth. - Indefensible (talk) 02:10, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

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