Hal Barron Racks up over $800K in travel in a year, GSK is spending money like a drunken sailor

Glaxosmithline is under fire from shareholders over the “excessive” travel expenses of its chief scientist. Hal Barron, the drugs giant’s highest-paid executive, received $807,000 (£620,000) in flights and hotels last year. One major investor said that they were “taken aback” by the “monumentally high” expenses ahead of the company’s AGM next month. Figures released by GSK show that Dr Barron, a high profile pharmacologist, last year racked up $464,000 worth of flights between his San Francisco home and GSK’s main research hubs in Philadelphia and Stevenage. He also spent $294,000 on accommodation in the UK last year, bringing his total benefits package to $807,000.
GSK’s jet-set scientist racks up travel bill worth nearly $800k

 

Damn! Last meeting I attended GSK wouldn't even let me expense a McMuffin for breakfast. Seriously. Sat in economy middle seat indulging on American Airline peanuts. Hal, you're entitled a$$ better be making this company strong..as in no more layoffs. We're watching Hal.

 

Please do not exhibit such profound naivete, the whole purpose of Hal's hiring was to turn the company around. Given that there are not too many profitable products, the only way to do that is layoffs. Hal's personal emoluments have nothing to do with whether or not there are layoffs or not. He is above the rest of us. What this will do for sure is to make travel reimbursement more painful for the rest of us.
Anyone who thinks that this will bode well for the rest of us needs to really reexamine their grasp on reality. Hal's contract was always sweeter than Emma's, all this does is highlight exactly the excesses that are perpetrated in the name of high level exec needs.

 

Is Emma getting paid $0.79 to Hal's $1.00?

 

Yes, but good ole Hal has been exposed to the people. He should be embarrassed and ashamed. But he will rationalize and behave like the rest of our egotistical leaders. I'm just glad it went public. Shame on you ..Hal! Kinda name is that? Hal?? Whata dusche!

 

The politically incorrect but correct answer is no. Hal has spent a lifetime in industry. Regardless of his personal competence (which is hard to gauge since he is new to the company) he does have a skill set and qualifications way above that of Emma who moved from L'Oreal.
GSK is the very embodiment of leftism that puts identity and gender above qualification and or competence, indeed conflating the two as mutually interchangeable elements in their post-competence era of identity fetishism.
The difference is that unlike governmental and not-for-profit sector jobs, there are real consequences for stupidity, even in the context of pharma excesses. Pharma sets pricing based on their perceived value to the market and predicted sale volume, supply demand ...yada yada.
What happens when a quasi-socialist, far left, identity fetish internal structure collides with the external reality of capitalist market forces? No need to wonder, you will find out in the next few months. Look around you, one can usually count on a hand the number of really competent people, sometimes a whole day goes by and you wonder "what the hell is wrong with these people?" And if you don't have that experience, you are one of the people that we are wondering this about.
As for Hal, he is way more qualified than Emma, so his contract should be different. Emma has no scientific background. Are they competent? I don't know, that is a measure of time. But who would you hire for your company?

 

The fact is, as stated in the article, both board members and share holders were "aghast" at his expenditures. I don't give a crap what his qualifications are, $800K per year in travel expenses is outrageous! He should have to reimburse some of those expenses in my opinion. We don't even have the details of what he expensed but I can assure you it was lavish. Hey Hal, what have you done today to make you feel proud?!!

 

was he flying privately? If he signed a deal to fly on NetJets then these numbers are not crazy, but if he is on the major airlines then he earned those frequent flier points because he is crazy to spend that much time on commercial airlines! The people at the top of publicly traded companies will always be treated like royalty despite being nouveau riche trash with a nice piece of paper from a reputable university.

 

This is a new modern world we live and work in. The internet and social media make it very difficult hide. Good ole boys like Hal have to learn that the hard way. At the end of the day, ole Hal will remain in his seven figure role and continue to behave arrogantly. But for this moment in time he has been exposed for what he is. Shame on you Hal!

 

Hal deserves unlimited travel expenses. Sounds like a fat ho mo hog has issues

 

Fat bitch ho mo

 

Yes shame on Hal. But he is hired to turn the company around, and have a new focus. The real people who are going to suffer from this is the employees who have to bend to the new travel rules. There's been an update to our new travel policy this past year and it includes such things as lunch is not included in our travel expense, if the place is providing food then I can't expense for a meal (for example, if they are serving tuna at the convention and I hate fish, so I decided to go to McD. I am responsible for that McD meal.) I have to give up my first born to get reimbursed for using my own car. Do you know how many times I fought we our Admin about my travel expense? Pretty much every trip. I HATE to travel because I ended up spending more than I would normally do if I didn't travel.

Maybe instead of being soooooo strict on us little people, they should really consider limiting Hal's travel budget. I really don't need to see his face twice a month. I'm good with just a Skype meeting.

 

wish I could like this post several times. GSK has always been penny wise and pound foolish. Being petty with small expenses while wasting vast sums. One example from over the years - I went to a meeting at an office about a half a mile from GSK’s offices when they were in downtown Philadelphia. The VP took a car service. I walked there in 10 minutes. It was a beautiful day and the VP was not visibly disabled.

Not paying for lunch while travelling is ridiculous. Most people don’t eat in airports and hotels for lunch. Many pack their own lunches. I’ve had to travel for work over weekends and pay for lunches. It’s these little things that damage morale especially when you see the waste elsewhere.

 

The most humorous, satire type, well written post I have read on cafe pharma.....apart from my own!!!!

 

GSK seems like a better company than Bayer. Does anyone know anything about Bayer just how awful that company is? Terrorising VPs such as Phil Blake, Klaus Marten and the -VP who was fired, went to Sanofi and was rehired as CEO Stefan Oerlich.

Ask your people who know about Bayer to inquire about the nasal sounding, arrogant, insecure, moron called Klaun Marten.

A latest quote from his email leaked.....

"One of my strategic concepts is to merge Bayer's hemophilia franchise with Gilead's HIV franchise as there are plenty of hemophilia patients we knowingly infected with hep b&c and HIV, hence we will offer a unrivaled value proposition to the payer; we have retroviral anti-HiV cocktails drugs to give to the sub-population of HIV patients with hemophilia which we infected. Also, please don't tell nobody, but I will deploy the same strategy I did with BetaStrapon-Betaferon by just increasing the price and offering a differentiating Klaun-Factor despite sales being so low, no competitor made a bisimilar to it. My other fabulous idea is not to innovate for the anti-TFPI autoinjector, instead just copying the device we had for the BetaStrapon auto-orgasmimasturbator-injector to offer differentiation to female patients with multiple sclerosis and those who have developed adverse events to our "women's health" aka contraceptive pills, by refraining from penetrative sex with their husbands and instead to use the BetaStrapon Injector. The other thing I am EXTREMELY PLEASED pleased by this device is because it has a 3D shape of my head at the end of the device to hit the K-spot, not the g-spot. As you will see if you are lucky enough to receive one, it is totally silent when it is injecting, so silent just like my open plan office, I like silence, it allows me to peer over my computer screen and terrorise my SUB-HUMANORDINATES. Also something else I AM EXTREMELY PLEASED, and also has a button to playback a multitude of my jingles and sound effects. E.g. hitting:

Button 1 plays back in my nasal German accented voice "are you feeling the Klaun Factor baby"

Button 2 "Jivi, Jivi, Jivi, it's better than Hemlibra"

Button 3 "Schnell! Schnell! Schnell" come quicker, you are wasting the battery life and I have things to do!

Button 4 "increase the price, increase the price, u have no strategy"

Button 5 "Let me just add one more thing, let me tell you what will happen!!"

Button 6 "Snejana, Snejana, if you go to human resources one more time and try and "Krass-me-ova....."

Button 7 "I AM EXTREMELY PLEASED with myself, everybody came up to me and congratulated me for my brilliant strategy - increase the price! increase the price! Increase the price!"

I also love bullying Chinese people, especially those with the name Joseph Lin. By God it was EXTREMELY funny to see his chubby-Slap-me-in-the-face-cheeks squirm and go red when I told he would be demoted one level to report to Hans Vis. Hahahahahah!! Fuck you Joseph Lin, that's what happens when you go and complain to subhuman resources.

I AM EXTREMELY PLEASED to inform you I will be leading Xarelto in 2020. I never want to retire, my ambition is to become the first VP in the genocidal history of Bayer to be the CEO from the product manager legacy members of Schering. Despite being a moron, I have a photo of a member of the Bayer family getting fucked by a donkey and have made 347 copies buried in secret locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, East of Poland, Sudenten-Germany in Czech Republic. If at any time I do not get promotions, I will hit a red button which will reveal the locations to the Bunt gossip magazine.

Fuck you everyone. I will relish in terrorising the lot of you. "

 

Some of these travel expenses are related to the fact that Hal is required to attend meetings in the UK to satisfy Inland Revenue (UK version of the IRS) criteria for GSK to take advantage of lower taxes in the UK. Formal product investment decisions at certain levels are required to take place in the UK to achieve this.

 

Don’t give a fuck. He’s an arrogant prick.

 

You're telling us that in one year, that almost 1 million dollars in travel is reasonable? If he were to travel 40 weeks out of the year at 5K per flight, that's only 200K. Believe me, that fat sob is not traveling that often nor should the flights be that expensive. Even lodgings at $500 dollars per night for 5 nights 40 weeks out of the year is 100K. Again, that fat slob of an executive is not ..excuse me..should not be traveling that often. Anyone every heard of conference calls? Hell my VP schedules a crap load of those worthless things and they don't cost a cent! How about Skype? Hal is spending like a drunken sailor on leave. Meanwhile, we just never seem to hit our "target bonus". Talk about demotivating your employees. Our managers haven't actually sold in decades. Yet they're supposed to know what the current selling environment is like.. yeah right! Leadership here sucks! How can our board of directors not see this? Why can't Wall Street call these clowns out? Hal, shame on you!

 

he prob ordered up $750 grand in porno films in his room.

 

Gay or straight films?