This has been the story of Amarin Corporation from the beginning—repeated strategic incompetence by management while attempting to compete with far more capable pharmaceutical companies. Under the leadership of John Thero, the company made what may be one of the most consequential strategic mistakes in biotech history: failing to include a statin-intolerant arm in the REDUCE-IT trial.
That single decision potentially closed the door on a market opportunity worth tens of billions of dollars. Any competent leadership team should have recognized the enormous commercial and clinical importance of generating data in statin-intolerant patients. Instead, management failed to pursue it.
What makes the situation even more troubling is that while shareholders lost billions in value, Thero and the executive team collected millions of dollars in compensation. Investors funded those pay packages while watching the value of the company deteriorate due to management’s poor strategic judgment.
Denner, has stepped in and has attempted to clean up the situation. However, Sarissa has now realized that the damage done under Thero and his team was far worse than anyone on the outside initially understood.
In short, shareholders were left holding the losses created by years of poor decisions, while those responsible walked away with substantial compensation. The task now facing the new leadership is not simply improving the company—it is repairing the consequences of years of mismanagement.
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