Viehbacher takes first steps in Biogen redesign

President and CEO Chris Viehbacher took his first major steps in a redesign of Biogen that is meant to both reduce the risk profile of the company’s pipeline and resize its cost base to match its declining revenues.

Earlier this year, Viehbacher told BioCentury that one of his first opportunities for change at Biogen Inc. (NASDAQ:BIIB) would be to overhaul the company’s cost base. “There are really two issues at Biogen. One is that we’re clearly not growing revenues anymore. We’ve got an aging portfolio of principally MS drugs,” he said during a Q&A with BioCentury in early March. “The second is that we still have a cost base that’s associated with being a bigger company than we are, which in terms of getting back to growth, is the first opportunity for change.”...