Autocratic Panic Exits ICN Stage, Leaves Big Hole
By RICK REIFF and MICHAEL LYSTER
Sidestepping the particular issues that resulted in Milan Panic’s forced resignation, let us say that we are sad to see ICN Pharmaceutical’s founder and chief executive leaving after an extraordinary 42 years as boss.
In a world of polished, measured, press-wary and regulator-deferent CEOs, Panic was a delightful exception. He told the government and critics what he thought, and sometimes told you what he thought of you. Consequences be damned.
Panic was a surviving entrepreneur, with a rags-to-riches story that ought to be made into a movie: A Nazi-resistance fighter at age 14 who defected from Yugoslavia to the West during a bicycle race, who with $200 in pocket and a washing machine as centrifuge in an L.A. garage, built a drug business that now has $850 million in yearly sales and international status.
He even took time off to serve as prime minister of Yugoslavia during the tumult of the early ’90s, tangling with Slobodan Milosevic before most of the world was ready to; the Milosevic regime wound up confiscating ICN’s Serbian plant.
There were few things more memorable than interviewing Panic, with a nervous press aide at his elbow twitching but not daring to interrupt his boss, as Panic digressed into attacks on federal agencies, socialism, errant capitalism, analysts, lawyers, etc.
ICN’s Orange County headquarters won’t be the same without Panic. The building’s monolithic black fa & #231;ade took on an Eastern European, almost Iron Curtain, feel. And what will they do with the big oil painting of Panic in the lobby? The iconic portrait captures ICN’s founder in his younger days, though at first glance you might think it was some Balkan war hero.
And you couldn’t make up the kind of copy Panic provided. Two years ago he squared off with one of his rivals, Swiss financier Tito Tettamanti a Serb battling a man named Tito.
Panic was proud to a fault, a sometimes merciless autocrat who berated quivering underlings, flaunted his vigor and kept lawyers busy defending him against sexual harassment claims that he preferred to fight rather than settle discreetly.
Yet even managers who chafed under him conceded his brilliance as a visionary and businessman. His boasts got him into trouble with the SEC and others sensitive to executives hyping their own stocks. But, unlike the typical CEO eager to appease the government, Panic almost always dug in, enduring long investigations, eventual fines but sometimes at least partial vindication.
“I’ve been proven right so much in my life, the first time against Nazis, the second time against Communists, so Food and Drug looked reasonably small time,” he told the Orange County Business Journal after the FDA finally approved ICN’s ribavirin for hepatitis C use in 1998.
But ultimately, Panic couldn’t beat a full-bore assault from disenchanted institutional investors, who finally succeeded in shifting the company’s directors in their favor. We wonder, though, given ICN’s intriguing and tangled international dealings, so many of which bear Panic’s imprint, just how this company will fare in his absence.
Rick Reiff is executive editor of the Orange County Business Journal and Michael Lyster is editor.
