Bernard Sherman - Biography

Bernard C. Sherman (born 1942), Chairman and CEO of Apotex Inc., is a Canadian businessman. With an estimated net worth of $US 2.9 billion (as of March 2011), Sherman was ranked by Forbes as the 9th wealthiest Canadian and 393rd in the world.

Business experience

Barry Sherman entered the University of Toronto's Engineering Science program at age 16 and was the youngest to do so. He also graduated from Engineering Science with the highest honours in his class and received the university's Governor General's Award for his thesis. He then received a Doctoral degree from MIT. He is Jewish and has donated a recorded amount of 50 million dollars to the United Jewish Appeal. He is well-known throughout Toronto for his considerable charitable donations, having built a major addition to the geriatric Baycrest Centre, and to other Toronto-area community centers and hospitals. He is married to Honey Sherman, and they have four children.

While at Toronto's Forest Hill Collegiate and completing his university education at University of Toronto, Barry often worked for his uncle Louis Lloyd Winter, at his pharmaceutical company, Empire Laboratories. Empire was the largest Canadian wholly owned pharmaceutical company at that time, and a pioneer in the generic drug industry (Parke Davis v. Empire Laboratories [1963], 41 C.P.R. 121; Parke, Davis & Co. v. Empire Laboratories Ltd., [1964] S.C.R. 351). When his uncle would travel, Barry often helped watch over the operations. Empire provided Sherman with the training and foundation for his development of Apotex Inc., one of Canada's leading generic pharmaceutical companies.

In the summer of 1967, directly after completing his Ph.D. in astrophysics at MIT, Barry Sherman pursued and successfully purchased the Empire Group of Companies from the executor of Louis and Beverley Winter's estate, as both his aunt Beverley Winter and uncle Louis Winter had died seventeen days apart in November 1965, leaving four orphaned young children: Paul Timothy, Jeffrey Andrew, Kerry Joel Dexter, and Dana Charles. Prior to the purchase, Empire was the first to successfully secure the compulsory rights to manufacture Hoffman-La Roche's highly profitable Valium (diazepam), and was one of Canada's largest manufacturers of Pfizer's Vibramycin (tetracycline), Upjohn Company's Orinase (tolbutamide), and the leading dietary sweetener Saccharin. To facilitate the corporate acquisition, Barry along with his high school friend, Joel Ulster (Sherman and Ulster Limited), offered five percent equity options to each of the four children and a fifteen year royalty on four of its patented products (Globe and Mail, November 24, 2007). Litigation is currently before the courts concerning the purchase of the corporate assets and brands from the Winter children's estate, as Sherman and his partner never paid the royalties nor provided the promised equity in the businesses.

Barry Sherman realized that the major market for his generic business's future growth lay in the United States. In 1970 he invested in New York's Barr Laboratories with US-based partners, and he became its largest shareholder and served as Barr's president. Barry has been selling off his Barr shares recently, and as of 2000, he controlled about 33% Barr Laboratories' stock. Barr made headlines and massive share growth when it won the first rights to manufacture generic versions of Eli Lilly's Prozac. Today, Barr Laboratories' is a division of Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and its head office is in Montvale, New Jersey, and it is publicly traded on the NYSE using the symbol BRL. In 2004, the Company ranked sixth among the world's top ten independent companies in the $11 billion generic pharmaceutical business. Barr is Wal-Mart's leading pharmaceutical supplier according to Forbes, and its annual 2007 sales exceeded $2.5 billion US.

In January 1972, Sherman and Ulster Limited sold Empire Laboratories to the Quebec-based Canadian operations of publicly traded International Chemical and Nuclear (ICN) of California, for 57,000 shares (Valeant Pharmaceuticals). In 1973, Barry Sherman started Apotex with only a few key former Empire Laboratories' personnel and he incorporated it in 1974. This privately owned and Sherman controlled company is today in the top 15 of the world's largest generic pharmaceuticals with its head office in Toronto; it is Canada's largest Canadian-owned pharmaceutical.

On July 18, 2008, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA), one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, announced its proposed acquisition of Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for a total consideration of $7.46 billion US plus the assumption of net debt of approximately $1.5 billion. Teva Pharmaceutical confirmed on December 8, 2008 that it has secured the required financing to complete the transaction.

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