Paul Clancy’s CFO view of activist investors

Paul Clancy successfully engaged with activist investors for more than a decade as CFO of Biogen, then Alexion. A stalwart believer in value-based management, Paul was recognized in the top three biotech CFOs by Institutional Investor from 2011-2020. He was awarded the number five Top CFO by the Wall Street Journal, across all industries. Now he sits on four biotech boards, teaches at Cornell’s business school, and is an executive in residence at Harvard Business School. We discuss the unique challenges of allocating capital, innovation, and marketing resources with very long product development cycles. Paul is also clear that once “you get a medicine to market, you actually can narrow the range of outcomes” and all the “sound principles of corporate finance” apply.