Finance

Valeant is getting beat up again

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Pharmaceutical firm Valeant's stock continued its sell off Monday morning with the stock opening down over 5%.

The stock started falling on September 18, when lawmakers started taking action against companies that gouge the prices of prescription drugs. Since then, it's lost a quarter of its value.

VRX stock one month
Yahoo Finance

Washington's interest was peaked when the world found out about Martin Shkreli, a hedge fund manager who purchased a prescription drug and jacked up the price 5,000%.

That started a conversation about pharmaceutical firms that engage in the same behavior, and Valeant — a Wall Street darling with a connection to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman — was pinpointed as one of the worst offenders.

Last week, short selling firm Citron research released a note about Valeant with a table listing all the drugs the company purchased and their price increases:

valeant drug gouge chart
Citron Research

 

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Linette was a senior correspondent at Business Insider who focused her writing on tech, finance and economics as well as international relations. She also conducted investigations into controversial companies, like Tesla.She joined BI in the summer of 2011 after graduating from Columbia University's School of Journalism and holds a BA from Columbia University, where she finished her undergraduate education in 2008.In 2017 she won the Folio 'Rising Star' award for top women in media. In 2020 she won the 'Excellence in Financial Journalism' Award in opinion writing from NYSSCPA for a piece on US-China relations, 'The Huawei indictment marks the end of US and China's cycle of trust.' In 2023 she won the New York Press Club award for commentary in digital journalism for a series of stories about the stock market's decline in 2022.She contributes to "Marketplace," a radio show from American Public Media, and can be seen on MSNBC and CNN.Some stories by Linette: