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To the health-care industry, President Clinton's reform package is mostly bad medicine. To a refocused and newly aggressive R.P. Scherer Corp., it's just what the doctor ordered.
The Troy-based developer and manufacturer of oral drug-delivery systems is plotting major growth by building on its expertise through two new divisions.
One division will develop advanced technologies to improve existing drugs whose patents are expiring. The company will work with other drug manufacturers.
The second division uses Scherer's technologies to improve those drugs coming off a patent. The company hopes to upgrade those drugs for its own sales.
We "tinker on the edge," said Aleksandar Erdeljan, 43, Scherer's co-CEO with Jack Cashman, 52, who also is chairman of the 61-year-old company. "We stop looking for breakthroughs and start looking for refinements.
"Historically, our role has been confined to a contract manufacturer," Erdeljan said. "In the last four years, things have changed.
"Internally, we have recognized there is more value added in what we do than we have given ourselves credit for. We realized we are also development partners."
Erdeljan and Cashman bought the company in 1989 after a nasty public battle. Karla Scherer, daughter of company founder Robert Scherer, was pitted against company management, including Karla Scherer's estranged husband, President and CEO Peter Fink. Fink died in November.
Scherer praised Erdeljan for returning the company to its roots and said his leadership is "like a dream come true."
Erdeljan and Cashman immediately took the company private in 1989 with a leveraged buyout. New York City-based investment brokerage Lehman Brothers Inc. provided the equity and debt financing. Erdeljan and Cashman took the company public in 1991.
R.P. Scherer controls nearly 80 percent of the soft-gel market, the technology that delivers drugs through the body. But it also makes cosmetics, vitamin and mineral supplements and...