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The Frost Factor: An M&A Leader's Standout Strategy For Opko Health

 
• By William Looney

With CEO leadership in the biopharma industry more short-cycled than ever, billionaire entrepreneur Phillip Frost ranks as a competitor for the long game – the last man standing in an endurance test spanning four decades of exposure to every iteration of a fast-changing business model. Frost’s strategy at Opko eschews the approach of most of his CEO peers to seek therapeutic dominance in a narrow band of core competencies.

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Phillip Frost, MD, a dermatologist by training, is arguably biopharma’s most accomplished asset hunter. He has a 40-year track record in scoring opportunities not seen by others – Frost has that restless, roving eye that lingers longer when serendipity strikes. It has made him a billionaire. Some observers see his business model as a throwback to the old days of the multi-platform conglomerate, an approach dismissed by many of today’s biopharma CEOs who prefer to focus on a single strategic core. But evidence shows that Frost, now an octogenarian, has delivered value to shareholders over the years, in diverse business segments ranging from small molecules and generics to his current play on innovative biologics and diagnostics.

The big question about the Frost growth formula is, in the famous calculation of investment seer Warren Buffett, does the...

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