The future looked bleak for Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Co. when George Nakayama took over as chief executive officer in 2010.
The stock was in the middle of a six-year free fall, its Indian subsidiary Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. was banned by the US from selling products there, and a new anti-clotting medicine was slapped with the strictest safety warning.
Nakayama, a former salesman for one of Japan’s biggest brewers, decided to reboot Daiichi Sankyo, pivoting away from generic medicines and toward the more lucrative business of cancer drugs. He sold scandal-ridden Ranbaxy for $3.2 billion, acquired two US-based makers of