Passing of Taro Iwamoto

Who said anything was suspicious? But now that you mention it...

 

BONZI!!!!!!!!!

 

Taro was the future... hand picked by Otsuka family and leadership. What is next... will culture change or do they have a back up plan. Serious question... anyone have any insight?

 

Good guy too bad

 

He was one of the good guys, a visionary and the Japanese management hated him. They wanted him to fail and did not expect the skyrocket success of Abilify. However, it was unfortunate that he pruned Otsuka into a "CNS" focused drug market and didn't care for broad spectrum of other therapeutic pipeline. This company could have developed a huge market for cardiovascular and oncology drugs, but they were too blinded by the success of one friggin' schizophrenia drug.

 

He was an arrogant and vindictive twit who never tired of telling people how he worked out every morning at 5:30am or whatever. Used a translator at the all employee meeting I attended the first year he succeeded Mr. Yoshikawa when he knew very well how to speak English to an American audience. Strutted back and forth across the stage addressing us in Japanese setting the stage for his imperious style. Such a glaring difference from the graceful and quiet approach Mr.Yoshikawa always took when addressing the employees.

 

Yep, agree

 

All true. He resized offices in home office (the old Univeristy Bldg) so that they were smaller than his. Said such a big office for BO was wasteful. There's tons of stories like this.

He micromanaged how much soda was ordered.

 

The best part about the office story was that one wall was moved in by about 6 inches. It made no difference at all.

 

Haha ha! When they first relocated to that University bldg from across the street, it looked like it was designed to look like BMS offices. Couple years later, it looked so cramped, I see all these hotel workstations along the hallways for guest visitors to work at with no privacy whatsoever. People were fighting for workspaces in the lunch room. It reminded me of the typical Asian street market lunch stalls. Pathetic!

 

The culture/work environment at the home office just sounds miserable!

 

Puzzling how someone so diminutive and energetic, who rises early to work out every morning could suddenly succumb to heart failure. Hmmmm.

 

Either he killed himself or someone murdered him for his bad business decisions.

 

......it is! Abyssmal!

 

We all know he was horrible and only interested in his own fame and wealth.

 

He definitely was a change agent. He had his flaws but his achilles heal was how he selected his leadership. I remember he ripped into John B for being a totally incompetent during a meeting, which was awesome to watch, however he never fired him. He also trusted the US leadership which would speak bad about him behind is back and never to his face. These cowards flew to Japan for his funeral just for the free trip. Had he fired the whole OAPI and OPDC board years ago he would still be around as we would have had wins. He also ripped into other leaders at meetings, even made one cry, but he never fired them. He definitely had an inflated ego but always his intentions for Otsuka were good. I won't speak bad about him ever, even though he wasn't that nice to me towards the end of his life but I totally respect him.