Amgen's tough-guy boss

SmartMoney sits down with Amgen Chief Executive Kevin Sharer for its March issue and finds a CEO with "a militant look," which isn't all that surprising given the business he's in. The Thousand Oaks-based biotech company is duking it out with both Johnson & Johnson and Roche over franchise products. There's pressure from Washington to reduce Medicare reimbursement - plus the usual pressure from Wall Street to keep cranking double-digit growth. "The development of biopharmaceutical drugs is the most difficult managerial job I've ever had," says Sharer. "Nothing is remotely close." Some highlights:

SM: Your anemia drugs Epogen and Aranesp, which make up half of Amgen's $12.4 billion in sales, are under some serious competitive attack.

KS: It's our biggest single market, but we have three other multibillion-dollar products.

SM: Okay, but in the meantime, Roche is expected to introduce its anemia drug Cera this year.

KS: We are suing for patent infringement to stop them. Roche introduced its product in Europe because Epogen was going off patent in Europe. Since they had it already, they decided to take a free shot at the U.S. market [where Amgen's Epogen patent remains]. My opinion is that they offer no innovation.

SM: Some very smart people are betting you're going to lose.

KS: It sounds like the same people who said we would lose the patent case in 2003. We did not. [In 2003 a federal appeals court ruled that Transkaryotic Therapies' Dynepo drug infringed on two Amgen patents.]