LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ernesto Bertarelli: Company
built 652 days ago
Ernesto Bertarelli (36), who is one of the world’s most successful young business leaders, has led Serono since 1996. Headquartered in Geneva and with major operations worldwide, the firm has grown into the world’s third largest biotechnology company. Total revenues rose from USD 809 million in 1996 to USD 1.24 billion last year, and earnings per share increased from USD 3.36 to USD 19.50 over the same period.
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Bertarelli, the third generation of his family to head the company, has the right credentials. After spending time as a salesman, project manager, and financial analyst at Serono, he went to Harvard to get his MBA in 1994. While other students were out on job interviews, Bertarelli would sift through the reams of company documents that were sent each week by his father, who by now was suffering from cancer. "He'd call and say, `Have you read that letter? What do you think?"' Bertarelli recalls. The day after graduating, Bertarelli flew to Geneva and was installed as CEO.
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Bertarelli is investing heavily in research and development to build on Rebif's success--24% of sales last year. Serono was able to fill its war chest with more than $1 billion from its successful initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000. This year, Commerzbank estimates Serono will report pretax profits of $419 million on sales of $1.4 billion, making it the world's No. 3 biotech company after the U.S.'s Amgen and Genentech. Bertarelli intends to keep up the pace--at the company and on the seas.
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Bertarelli has taken his case to Congress. In so doing he has opened the door to a possible revision of the entire law. That could help or hinder his company. The Orphan Drug Act has historically been good to Serono, which has relied on it for Serostim, a drug that responds to AIDS-related symptoms and pulled in $137 million from the U.S. last year. But the MS market is the real prize. This year Avonex could rack up $750 million in worldwide sales.
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GENEVA, Switzerland, April 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Serono announced today that its controlling shareholder, the Bertarelli family, has terminated discussions concerning a sale of the Company. The family has indicated that the offers it received did not adequately reflect the future prospects of the Company.
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Rival billionaire yachtsman Larry Ellison, the American whose BMW Oracle Racing syndicate raced — and lost — in the 32nd Cup challenger series, has bridled at Bertarelli’s strong-manager approach to organizing the next event. In a July 20 suit filed in Supreme Court in New York City, the Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) — BMW Oracle’s home club — alleges that Bertarelli’s club, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG), orchestrated events by arranging a challenge by Club Nautica Español de Vela (CNEV), a Spanish club that was created just a few days before the challenge, making that club challenger of record representing all the challengers for the 33rd Cup. The suit ... alleges that SNG got the club to agree to a protocol that puts virtually all decision-making and management into the hands of SNG and its management company, America’s Cup Management (ACM).
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