Chapter 894 (1/2)
Simon did not attend the signing ceremony of westero's stake in Gilead, but stayed in San Francisco for three consecutive days.
The schedule is full.
The most important thing is about Gilead's follow-up arrangements.
To officially become the largest shareholder of the company, the first thing Simon promoted was to finalize the post of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. After a more detailed understanding of the company, he made some adjustments. Rumsfeld's position was changed from the original CEO to Chairman of Geely. In addition, John Martin, the chief scientist in charge of product development, took over the position of CEO.
Prior to that, Gilead's chairman and CEO positions were held by the company's founder, Michael Oden, and this time it was a direct retreat from the background.
That doesn't mean Michael Oden is marginalized.
In fact, with more in-depth understanding of Gilead during this period, Simon gradually found that Michael Oden is the real soul of Gilead. Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld provided an essential government network for the rise of Gilead in history, but Michael Oden successfully used these resources to bring Gilead to the peak.
It's like Warren Buffett's great background is well known.
His father used to be a congressman, and his grandfather left a lot of legacy to the buffet family. From childhood to adulthood, his contacts were either high-level government or business executives. Any neighbor, Donald Keao, could become the president of Coca Cola later, and contributed to Warren Buffett's most successful investment to a large extent.
A lot of people think that's why Buffett's success came from it.
This ignores one thing.
In fact, there are many people with a similar background to Warren Buffett. Only Warren Buffett has become an investment tycoon and super rich.
That's the difference.
Michael Oden, 37, holds a doctor of medicine from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard University. First of all, he is an excellent person. Eight years ago, when Gilead was founded at the age of 29, he was able to bring the former US Secretary of defense and other bigwigs to the board of directors to escort the small company, which is enough to prove that Michael audan's family background is not much worse than Warren Buffett's.
In the past eight years, Michael o'dan has been able to ensure that Gilead has not closed down because of continuous losses, and has successfully completed the IPO even though there are some operations that are not very obvious, but there is no doubt about the ability of this middle-aged man.
Most importantly, during the communication between Simon and Michael audan, they found that the other side's description of Gilead's future development ideas is exactly the same as the development track of the company in Simon's memory.
Not only that, but he is also a very generous person. In the face of Simon's proposal to abdicate Rumsfeld, audan not only agreed to, or even completely retired from the background, but also abdicated the position of CEO to John Martin, the company's chief scientist with outstanding ability, which made Simon take a higher look.
It's never easy to let go.
Michael o'dan's concession can release a series of good news to the market.
Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of defense, serves as the chairman of the board of directors. We can see Gilead's contacts at the government level. We all know that this is enough to ensure that the new drug that Gilead is promoting is successfully approved by the FDA, even if it directly enters the US health care system.
I have to say one thing here.
Ordinary people always wish that all special drugs and high price drugs would be included in the medical insurance, so that they can be used when they get sick. They think that it is the government's emphasis on medical welfare to include these drugs in the medical insurance system.
But what about the truth?
As Simon remembers, Gilead's series of hepatitis C drugs cost $80000 for a course of treatment. After they are included in the US health insurance, ordinary Americans can really pay as long as they have health insurance. However, people may neglect that the money comes from sheep after all. This is an important reason for the abnormally high medical expenses in the United States.
Therefore, it is not that the government has included high priced drugs in the medical insurance system, or that it attaches importance to medical welfare, or that the authorities refuse to introduce some drugs into the medical insurance system, or that they ignore human suffering.
In many cases, the opposite may be true.
To get back to the point, Rumsfeld's appointment as chairman of the board can ensure Gilead's government contacts and give the position of CEO to the company's chief scientist, which is enough to show Gilead's emphasis on product research and development.
These two personnel changes, together with Gilead's upcoming new drug, are enough to change the market's attitude towards the company.
On the other hand, being a member of the westero system, Gilead's situation is completely open.
Next, Gilead can implement the development route in the original time and space, form its own product portfolio focusing on immune deficiency and anti-virus by constantly merging and acquiring similar start-up pharmaceutical enterprises, and then break through the U.S. health care system through the contacts of the authorities, so as to maximize the market share and finally realize Gilead's take-off.
These operations require Michael audan to be responsible for the operation.Although he resigned as chairman and CEO of Gilead, as the founder, Michael Oden still holds 12.7% of Gilead's shares. Coupled with Simon's absolute support, middle-aged people can promote Gilead's future according to their own ideas.
On Friday, Simon was invited to visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, east of the bay area.
This federal state-level laboratory was founded by Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Laureate in physics in the early 20th century, and Edward Taylor, the father of hydrogen bomb in the United States. It belongs to the National Nuclear Safety Administration of the Federal Department of energy, and is run by the University of California. It is mainly engaged in the research and development of chemical elements, supercomputers, nuclear weapons and other cutting-edge scientific and technological fields Make.
Lawrence Livermore laboratory took the initiative to invite Simon this time. It was mainly heard that the young super rich tycoon was interested in controllable nuclear fusion, and it was once said that he would provide funds for ITER project. Just as it happens, another controllable nuclear fusion research project being promoted by the laboratory has been stranded due to the continuous budget cuts of the federal government in recent years.
The name of the project is ”national ignition device.”.
This is a name that the laboratory specially named two years ago in order to apply for the federal government's budget support. In short, it uses multiple high-energy lasers to bombard fusion materials to stimulate nuclear fusion reaction. Different from tokamak and star simulator based on magnetic confinement principle, laser ignition technology is called inertial confinement fusion because it is squeezed by inertial force generated by laser bombardment to achieve the high temperature environment required by nuclear fusion.
In fact, the concepts of Tokamak, star simulator and laser ignition have been put forward since 1950s and 1960s.
Since he began to pay attention to this field last year, Simon has read a lot of materials carefully in private, and has a good understanding of several mainstream controllable fusion research directions at this stage.
Compared with tokamak and star simulator based on magnetic confinement principle, the biggest advantage of laser ignition is miniaturization. Some experts in related fields believe that laser ignition will be the top priority if we want to develop nuclear fusion driven spacecraft in the future, and the large tokamak and star simulator are more suitable for building nuclear power plants or large aircraft carrier ships.
Moreover, laser ignition technology has a controversial point.
Once the technology matures, it can also be used to make nuclear weapons. Unlike the hydrogen bomb which needs to be triggered by atomic bomb at the present stage, the hydrogen bomb using laser ignition technology will not produce radiation residue. It is clean and clean, and can even be used as a standing weapon.
Hydrogen bombs that can kill millions of people in an instant.
Clean, clean.
It sounds ironic. However, because of this characteristic, laser ignited hydrogen bombs can bypass the provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of the United Nations, because nuclear weapons that will produce serious radiation residues are prohibited by the treaty. It has to be said that human beings are really trying to exploit the loopholes for self destruction.
Simon is really interested in promoting the development of controllable nuclear fusion technology.
However, after the field visit, the idea of any support was directly dismissed.
Mainly want to live a few more years.
Moreover, since these ideas came into being last year, Simon has been learning, thinking and even remembering information about aerospace, nuclear energy and other fields.