Andreas Barner? Man of substance with a ... - Boehringer Ingelheim

32 BUSINESS 10. September 2009 DIE ZEIT Nr. 38
WHAT MOTIVATES...
Andreas Barner?
Man of substance
with a double doctorate
The doctor became a pharmaceutical researcher in order to be able
to help a lot more people. Now the boss of Boehringer Ingelheim
faces his greatest success
BY NINA GRUNENBERG

ugust 30 was something of a fateful day for
Boehringer. From the standpoint of the familyowned
company it offered two options: It could
have been a "black Sunday", or a Sunday on
which pharmaceutical innovative strength was
proclaimed in glowing terms. In any case, this
day would decide the company's future for the
next ten years.
This was the day on which the results of a study
investigating the active substance dabigatran in
stroke prophylaxis in patients with atrial
fibrillation were presented at the European
Congress of Cardiology in Barcelona and
concurrently published in the New England
Journal of Medicine.
An appropriate treatment that would be easier to
manage than Marcumar [phenprocoumon] and
associated with fewer risky complications had
been lacking until now. Researchers across the
globe had been trying to find out how blood
clotting could be influenced in a more
benevolent way. Boehringer Ingelheim had been
working particularly hard on this issue.
Andreas Barner, the boss - although he should
not really be called that because it conflicts with
the company's philosophy - says: "It was
perfectly clear that such a drug would be
medically important, but that its effects would
need to be confirmed in a large-scale clinical
study, the results of which would only emerge at
the every end."
This study involved some 18,000 patients in 44
countries and cost the company over 200 million
euros, a huge sum. "And all the time you're
wondering: Will the concept work? Is the drug
well tolerated, or will it be a disappointment for
the company?" It would not be the first time that
a preparation failed at the last hurdle.
"I love research and I am delighted by its
complexity"
A lot was at stake, but the outcome was clear:
The investment paid off. The Boehringer
scientists had achieved a medical breakthrough,
as confirmed by the cardiologists in Barcelona:
"For the first time in 50 years a new bloodthinning
agent had been developed that proved
to be safer and more effective than the existing
treatments". According to one conference
participant: "The result was a bombshell."
The application for the marketing authorisation
of Pradaxa (the brand name of the future drug)
is to be submitted in the Autumn. The
preparation has every chance of becoming a
bestseller – Boehringer's next "blockbuster", the
term the drugs sector uses to refer to drugs with
annual sales in excess of a billion dollars.
Andreas Barner is not just hoping for profits. He
is primarily concerned with new treatments
"which naturally occur only rarely, and very
rarely on the scale observed for this drug".
Barner, 56, has been the Chairman of the Board
of Boehringer Ingelheim since the start of this
In the family
With annual sales of 11.6 billion euros,
Boehringer Ingelheim is the world's
largest research-based pharmaceutical
company that remains wholly in family
ownership. Among German companies,
only the publicly listed Bayer AG is larger.
Business at the internationally-operating
Boehringer Group, which employs a
workforce of around 12,000 in Germany
and 41,300 worldwide, is good. In the past
year, the company posted a net profit of
1.4 billion euros. The return on equity is
no less than 42 percent.
The Shareholders' Committee, which
represents the owning families of
Boehringer and von Baumbach, has
been chaired since 2007 by the business
management graduate Christian
Boehringer (photo). He is a greatgrandson
of the company founder, who
started a tartar factory in 1885 in
Ingelheim am Rhein. While the head
office and production facilities are located
in Ingelheim, the largest research campus
is in Biberach in Baden-Württemberg
(photo below). Biberach is also the site of
the Biotechnikum, one of the largest cell
culture production facilities in Europe. In
Hanover, which is also a successful site
with its animal vaccines, the company
plans to set up a research centre, despite
the protests of local residents and animalrights
activists.
year and is additionally responsible for research,
development and medicine – according to the
company's articles of association one of four
equal members of the company management.
Egotistical CEOs are not part of the corporate
culture. The management style focuses on
consensus and collegiality and is coordinated
relatively closely with the managing
shareholders.
This suits a man like Barner who seeks out the
intellectual challenges in basic research and is
motivated by the associated complex hidden
opportunities. "I love research", he once said,
"and I am delighted by its complexity."
When he joined Boehringer in 1992 he had not
yet celebrated his fortieth birthday. He had
studied medicine in Freiburg and mathematics at
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich, obtaining doctorates in both these
subjects. After working for a year as a junior
doctor, he switched to the pharmaceutical sector
and worked in research at what was then Ciba-
Geigy AG in Basel.
What was such a brilliant individual looking for in
an industry whose infamous sales methods were
repeatedly in the headlines?
Barner viewed the pharmaceutical sector from a
different perspective. His motivation was to help
people in need. "As a doctor you are working for
individual people", he states. "In the
pharmaceutical industry you can achieve
something for many people at the same time.
And once you have decided to enter
pharmaceutical research, you are involved in
collective medicine for large numbers of people
and are hoping for just one thing – that you will
succeed in making a difference in patients'
lives."
He believes that such an opportunity may arise
just once or twice in a professional career, and
considers Pradaxa to be one such breakthrough.
The HIV drug Viramune was another hit, that
satisfied his high ethical standards. "The virus
was discovered in 1985, and the mortality rate
was huge, with 90 to 95 percent of patients
dying within a short period. While it is still a
serious illness, it has now become a chronic
condition. This is one contribution made by the
German industry, and I am pleased that we as a
company were part of the solution."
Andreas Barner, who is also a member of the
executive board of the German Protestant
Kirchentag [church congress], is not preceded
by a bow wave of importance when he enters a
room. He is of delicate build, modest and
charming and talks quietly. He has been a
member of the Science Council for a year and
has impressed the professors with the breadth
of his knowledge, awareness of the problems in
research, but above all with "his uncanny
timing", according to Council Chairman Peter
Strohschneider. When a discussion has lost its
way, he joins in and takes control shortly before
it ends in total confusion, bringing it back on
track with a thoughtful word or two.
He is experienced in the game of remaining
calm in the face of the uncertainties that crop up
in basic research and maintaining the overview
and defending justified hope. Convincing his
staff, not to mention the owners, that the
investment is paying off is his daily bread and
butter. "The risk that we are taking must be
clearly defined within the company. It is very
important to state openly just how great or small
you assess the risk to be. The staff must be
aware of this." He makes his own assessment
primarily by "listening to everyone who has
something intelligent to say. That helps."
"You are now the conscience of the
company"
In the Development Committee that he chairs he
alone takes the final decision, but he does not
do this secluded from everyone else and away
from the laboratories, but retains the connection
with the project teams. "We can bypass all the
hierarchy levels in order to listen to those who
are most familiar with a subject. This improves
the quality of the decisions, but it's also hard
work. Reading the documents prepared by a
project team is hard graft, but I believe it is the
right way of keeping abreast of the situation."
The programme up until 2015 has been set. The
next target year will be 2020. At Boehringer they
think in five-year strategy cycles because, after
all, live continues beyond the next quarterly
statement. Andreas Barner even prefers to think
in 25-year generations, which corresponds to
the units of time of the founding family, which
has owned the company for over a hundred
years - now in the fourth generation.
Only half-jokingly, Barner explains that, in his
opinion, pharmaceutical companies thrive best
under family ownership - without investors,
without shareholders and without financial
market analysts, people who tend not to take the
long view. "Anyone who decides to set up a new
research-based company now can expect to
wait four to eight years, depending on how much
basic research he carries out, until he obtains a
substance that promises what he expected from
the original research idea. From synthesis to
market maturity then involves, on average,
twelve years of development. So that makes 16
to 20 years. If you then consider how long a
preparation takes to be registered and become
relatively successful you can add a further four
or five years. In the end you have taken 25
years - a whole generation, just like in a familyowned
company."
When you visit Boehringer in Ingelheim you
have the impression of being in an alternative
world – far removed from all that we know of the
megalomania of the Schaefflers, Piëchs and
Porsches, but also not to be compared with
publicly listed pharmaceutical companies, which
sometimes hardly have the courage to do
research because the risk is too great.
In the four-member Shareholders' Committee,
which also acts as a kind of supervisory board, a
cohort of 40-year-olds currently has overall
2
responsibility. They are reported to see
themselves as trustees for their children, and
are determined to augment their legacy while
remaining true to the values of their forebears,
namely "to serve society through research and
the manufacture of new medicines".
Can this be true? Boehringer is extremely well
financed. The company has no debts, but rather
three billion euros in the bank, and is one of the
most profitable in Germany. It occupies 15th
place in the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical
companies and is the only family-owned firm in
this group.
In public Boehringer moves so discreetly that,
just 15 years ago, some were hardly aware of
the company's existence. This profile was in line
with the history of each family member, who
would be kept informed of the company's
business in silence and with closed eyes. The
secretary would then deliver the decisions to the
Board.
While this may have shown style, at the start of
the nineties it could no longer be denied that the
number of patents had dwindled and the
"pipeline" was running out. The family realised
that the old business model was no longer
working. They set themselves new goals,
focused more on specific drug groups and
appointed Andreas Barner as the Head of
Clinical Research. The family had finally
decided: "Now we have time for research". The
researchers simply had to say what they
needed. Would an investor have shown so much
blind faith? The then Chairman of the
Shareholders' Committee, Erich von Baumbach,
sent Barner on his way with the words: "You are
now the conscience of the company."
Ten years after this reorientation, success
returned. In 2002 Boehringer launched a new
drug for treating chronic respiratory symptoms,
the company's first blockbuster. Andreas Barner
is happy to be photographed with the Spiriva
inhaler. It is one of the drugs that make a
difference to patients' lives, one of his key
requirements.
He believes it is important that companies
should "focus strongly on the medical needs.
That's why we are carrying out research on HIV,
strokes and Alzheimer's, and why we entered
the field of oncology a few years ago. The
convincing answer that we are able to give, is
that the results generally prove profitable."
A reporter on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
recently regretted the fact that it was not
possible to buy shares in Boehringer, a
company "on which the sun shines". But would
that benefit the culture of the company?
Preventing any harm to this culture is one of
Barner's declared top priorities.
As a man who is looking to make a difference,
his ideas go in another direction. Germany was
once the "pharmacy of the world", and has now
lost this title. But might it be able to win it back
again? "Germany is expensive, but the
academic research is really good. We therefore
need to work hard to ensure that we are at least
back on a rising curve."