Nicusa CEO Paul Johnson made the comments in a letter last week, when he said a “flawed” corporate strategy is “destroying shareholder value” and causing investors to lose confidence in the clinical services provider.
For Nicusa, the crux of the problem seems to lie with BioClinica’s $30m investment in its eclinical business, the underperformance of which, they say, has not been explained due management’s reluctance to provide a financial breakdown.
The group suggested that integrating the eclinicals business with the firm’s “core” clinical trial imaging unit is proving more difficult and less harmonious than management might have anticipated, which they said “ calls into question the management of either the core imaging business or the eclinical strategy.”
Personal criticism
Nicusa’s criticism focused on the three executives who it said have “failed to demonstrate that there are any synergies between the two businesses.”
The group alleges that Dr Nowiki, the chairman of the board, was “co-opted by management, and has bought into a failed strategy,” adding “We do not believe he is qualified to be chairman.”
The stakeholders describe Weinstein as “the architect of multiple failed investment strategies,” accusing him of being unwilling to cooperate constructively with shareholders and holding him “personally responsible for the company’s failed and costly investment in CapMed.”
Bioclinica CFO, Mr Kaminer, also finds himself in the firing line for, allegedly, failing to provide transparency into the performance of the company’s two businesses and being “unable to articulate the company’s financial strategy.”
According to Johnson, over the past five years BioClinica have managed to increase the company’s book value by 193 per cent from $17.0m to $52.6m, yet have only added 13.8 per cent to the stock price.
He also claimed that although BioClinica has almost tripled the money invested in the business, the stock price has barely altered.
BioClinica has since released a response to the shareholder letter, and Mark Weinstein, the firm’s CEO, has agreed to take part in an Outsourcing-Pharma podcast to discuss the matter further.