Persistence pays off for Novartis chief Vasella

GENEVA: Novartis AG Chief Executive Officer Daniel Vasella spent years persuading fellow Swiss company Nestle SA to part with Alcon Inc for the eye-care business' higher growth rate. His persistence has paid off.

Novartis this week announced a plan to acquire the 75 percent of Alcon that it doesn't own for $38.3 billion. The drugmaker will purchase Nestle's 52 percent stake, and offered to buy out the minority shareholders who own the rest. Vasella said in a Jan 4 telephone interview that he persevered "off and on for several years" before Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe agreed to the deal.

Acquiring Alcon gives Novartis a third of the $26 billion global eye-care market as Vasella seeks to replace revenue that will be lost when patents on hypertension drug Diovan and the Gleevec leukemia treatment, the company's best sellers, start to expire in 2012. He estimates that the global eye-care business will increase at 7 percent a year through 2015, more than the 5 percent growth forecast for prescription medicines, as the world's aging population suffers from glaucoma and cataracts.