Meda in brief »Sales and marketing »Drug development »Manufacturing »Meda´s responsibility »Ethics »Corporate governance »Employees »Patients »Environment »Community »Executives »Board of directors »

Within a company’s business concept, issues and viewpoints outside traditionally calculated shareholder value metrics are becoming increasingly prominent.

Besides generating profit and yield, shareholders, markets, employees, and society in general desire and demand that individual companies assume greater and broader responsibilities. These enhanced responsibilities involve building business relationships in a socially and environmentally responsible way with the most business-critical associates and partners.

Additionally, these relationships are based on respect, responsibility, and professionalism. In turn, this effort strengthens Meda’s ability to create long-term value and growth.

Meda’s corporate responsibility (CR) concept combines responsibility issues into six areas: ethics, corporate governance, patient safety, employees, the environment, and community.

Click on the links above for more information about each area, or click below for a complete summary of Meda’s responsibilities.

Summary of Meda’s responsibilities

Ethics

When a business activity touches people’s lives and health, it must be unconditionally implemented in a responsible and ethically correct manner. To ensure proper implementation, Meda applies an integrated policy known as its Business Conduct Guidelines for all operations. This policy is updated continuously.

The policy covers (i) Meda’s ongoing environmental management and (ii) all supplier relationships; ethical and environmental factors play a highly valued roll in business relationships.

The policy also explains situations to employees in which they might risk making decisions that could inappropriately benefit themselves or the company. Meda’s ethical rules expressly forbid all forms of gifts, bribes, or similar to customers, public authorities, or competitors that aim to create an advantage for Meda. Any breach of this constitutes grounds for immediate dismissal. Similarly, attempts to influence political parties and candidates through donations are not permitted.

Competition legislation

In many countries, competition legislation ensures that pharmaceuticals and other goods are sold to customers at the best possible price. Collaborations or agreements with competitors regarding prices, terms, or similar conditions risk breaching competition legislation, which is counter to Meda’s policy. In addition, Meda’s employees are prohibited from making false, misleading, or demeaning statements about individuals, organizations, or their products and services.

Public authorities and agencies

Meda’s policy is to ensure that all information (both oral and written) provided to public authorities and agencies is truthful, correct, and complete. Meda’s staff, partners, associates, and stakeholders may not provide false, fictitious, or incorrect information to any public authority or agency or withhold significant
facts when providing information.

Animal studies

Despite considerable pharmaceutical industry advances to find alternative methods to animal studies during pharmaceutical development, these studies are unavoidable and obligatory in certain instances.

As a specialty pharma company, Meda’s development is essentially concentrated to clinical studies in a late phase, which means that the drugs concerned have already been tested on people several times. In 2009, Meda performed a total of three studies that involved animals—a number that is almost nonexistent in an industry comparison. In cases in which animal studies are required, Meda observes an internal policy that was updated in 2008. This policy means that Meda follows Good Laboratory Practice per ISO 15189 and guidelines in OECD Principles of Good Laboratory Practice.

Corporate governance

Employees

Meda’s continual aim is to maintain its strength as a small company by having a non-hierarchical organization with short decision-making paths and accelerated work processes. Joined with the resources of a large company, the result is a clear competitive advantage that ensures continual realization of key business opportunities.

Meda strongly values its dedicated and well-educated employees with extensive expertise within all its operations. As a specialty pharma company, most of Meda’s employees are active within sales and marketing. The roughly 1,600 persons within these areas represent more than 60% of total staff. At year-end 2009, Meda had 2,601 employees of whom 55% were women and 45% men.

In recent years, business operations and staff have grown quickly, particularly through acquisitions. In early 2005, Meda had about 150 employees, so the company multiplied over 17 times in five years. An important challenge in recent years has thus been integration of acquisitions and creation of a new, uniform Group and culture. To this end, Meda has developed increasing numbers of joint conditions and policies for the entire organization. The principle has been to use the best, most advantageous methods from all operations.

Working environment

Meda considers a safe, healthy working environment to be a necessity for all employees, and it strives to fully observe all applicable occupational health and safety legislation and regulations. Overall Group policy is implemented in detailed local working environment handbooks for countries in which Meda has a substantial number of employees—primarily in France, Germany, Sweden, and the US.

Equality and diversity

Meda’s explicit policy is to offer all employees and job applicants equal opportunities regardless of ethnicity, skin color, religion, gender, sexual preference, nationality, age, or physical or mental disability. The policy is clearly defined in Meda’s Business Conduct Guidelines.

Professional development

Employees’ dedication, participation, and loyalty are crucial for Meda’s future development. Consequently, a key factor for continued success is its structured professional development process. Besides salary terms and continuing education opportunities, Meda occasionally offers a share option plan to key employees.

Sick leave

In 2009, sick leave fell from 3.3 to 3.1%. Sick leave is relatively evenly split between women and men and among various age groups. As in previous years, most sick leave was short term. Consecutive sick leave exceeding 60 days represented 0.9%.

Sick leave (%)	2007	2008	2009
Women	4.0	3.8	3.6
Men	3.2	2.7	2.5
Total	3.7	3.3	3.1
By age
50–	3.9	3.7	4.4
30–49	3.7	3.0	2.7
0–29	2.9	3.9	2.7
	3.7	3.3	3.1
Continuous sick leave > 60 days	0.9	0.7	0.9

Patient safety

The environment

This impact consists primarily of energy use and waste at the Group’s production facilities and emissions in conjunction with travel and transportation. Offices and other premises also use energy.

Meda strives to work and act in a way that is environmentally sustainable in the long term. Resources must be used efficiently, and environmental consideration must be integrated into all decisions. Meda tries to ensure that regulations and laws concerning the environment and working conditions are observed. Toxic chemicals in particular are handled with extreme care. In addition, Meda continually works according to ISO 14001 to reduce its environmental impact beyond requirements set by current legislation, particularly in the reduction of energy use and waste production.

Meda's environmental policy

Meda’s environmental initiatives must contribute to a long-term sustainable society and maintain profitability through economizing on natural resources. Tangible guidelines and objectives for Meda’s environmental work are to:

• Comply with prevailing environmental legislation and ordinances across the company
• Consider opportunities and risks from an environmental perspective when making business decisions
• Try to reduce energy use in all parts of the business
• Consider the environment when purchasing goods and services and when choosing transportation and travel
• Ensure secure, responsible chemical management
• Prevent and limit water and waste volumes and continuously improve waste management
• Work toward an environmental management system per ISO 14001
• Involve and train employees in environmental issues and create an atmosphere of continuous improvement

Each country manager must ensure that the Group’s environmental policy is implemented within all facilities. Local additions and adaptations may also be made to strengthen the policy.

Environmental permits and manufacturer liability

Main focus in Meda’s environmental work is on controlling operations at its production facilities in France, Germany, and the US—and pilot-scale production in the drug development department in Germany. These facilities hold environmental permits required by legislation of each country and the EU.

Meda was well aware of its operations’ impact on the environment before introduction of an environmental management system. This knowledge is based on historical operational data and the comprehensive environmental audits of risks that Meda has commissioned in recent years at the production facilities in France, Germany, and the US—plus the development department in Germany. No deviations from prevailing legislation were found. The environmental audits included a review of geological conditions, land use issues, production procedures, related environmental factors, and legal requirements for management of such factors. The audits also included safety-related incidents; complaints from area residents; tanks above and below ground and their related piping; testing and certification of the tanks; procedures for prevention of unplanned discharges; noise issues; and review of the presence of dangerous materials such as asbestos, ozone-depleting substances, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB).

Certified environmental management system per ISO 14001

Meda developed an environmental management system in 2008, and it complies with ISO 14001. The environmental management system was certified in 2009 for production facilities in France and Germany, the product development facility in Germany, and the head office in Stockholm. LRQA was appointed as certification agency. In early 2010 environmental management standards were implemented in the production facilities in the US. These will be progressively implemented in the rest of the Group.

Reporting of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions

Since 2008, Meda has participated annually in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in which the Group reports direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases. Cooperation with the CDP provides Meda with good guidance for its continued environmental initiatives.

Drugs in the environment

Meda complies with regulatory requirements in the countries in which they operate and carefully monitors published observations and findings. Modern analysis technology enables drug residues in water environments to be discovered at very low concentrations. In general, the consensus of global experts at universities, public authorities, and in the industry on whether traces of drugs in the environment comprise a risk is not unanimous, but the predominant view is that volumes measured to date cannot be considered a risk for human beings or cause injury to animals and plants.

Restoration obligations

In the 1980s, long before Meda acquired its production facility in Cologne, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHC) contamination were discovered in groundwater. An action plan was then produced in cooperation with the applicable public authorities. The plan called for removal of contaminated soil. In the 1990s, a water pump was installed, and it continues to pump up and purify groundwater with activated carbon. Levels of PAH and CHC contamination have gradually declined. Groundwater pumping is expected to continue until at least 2016.

Community

For Meda, responsible entrepreneurship also means contributing positively to the community. As a pharmaceutical company, Meda can improve people’s health and well-being by providing cost-effective and medically well-motivated drugs. Besides contributions generated by the company’s operations, Meda works actively in a range of community support projects, including donations to charitable organizations and research sponsorship.

Meda's children's fund

Meda’s Children’s Fund is a charitable foundation for needy children. It has been active since 2002, and supports a range of projects, such as (i) establishment of a child and prenatal care clinic in Ghana in collaboration with Plan International and Ghana’s health authority, (ii) a hospital project in Uganda, (iii) projects targeting victims of the tsunami disaster, and (iv) several school projects in Africa, some in collaboration with International Care and Relief (ICR). ICR is a UK-based relief organization with focus on Africa.

Karloniska Institutet

Karolinska Institutet’s Breakthroughs for Life campaign concerns research related to inflammatory diseases. In February 2008, Meda initiated a donation to the campaign, which will total SEK 35 million. Inflammatory diseases are one of Meda’s key therapy areas. Karolinska Institutet plays a critical role in the progress toward these conditions being preventable and curable in the future thanks to its state of-the-art research, completely new approaches to prevention and early treatment, and its unique close ties between basic and patient-based research.

Karolinska Institutet was founded in 1810 and is one of the world’s leading medical universities and one of the largest in Europe. It is Sweden’s only university with a purely medical focus and is the nation’s largest center for medical training and research. The Nobel Forum at Karolinska Institutet selects the Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine. The Breakthroughs for Life campaign aims to support research areas in which Karolinska Institutet is already a leader and in which financial measures can contribute to medical research breakthroughs in coming years.

AmeriCares

Since 2003, Meda has been a partner of AmeriCares, a non-profit organization that delivers medicine, medical supplies, and aid to needy people worldwide.

Since it was founded in 1982 at the request of Pope John Paul II, the organization has supplied humanitarian aid worth more than USD 9 billion to 137 countries. AmeriCares has provided aid after cyclones in Bangladesh, earthquakes in Peru and Pakistan, hurricane Katrina in the US, starvation in Darfur, and the tsunami in southeast Asia.

MAP International

Since 2001, Meda has donated drugs to MAP International, a non-profit aid organization founded in 1954. MAP works to provide clinics and hospitals in vulnerable areas with FDA-approved medicines and health-care equipment. MAP also works to prevent and mitigate outbreaks of disease and to promote construction of local health-care facilities. MAP works for the poorest people in more than 115 countries worldwide.

MAP has played a key role in providing access to healthcare and medicine for millions of victims of the most recent humanitarian disasters, such as starvation in Darfur, the tsunami in southeast Asia, and the devastating hurricane seasons in the Caribbean. In 2009 Meda donated medicine to Haiti, Honduras, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Romania, and many other developing countries.

Direct Relief International

In 2009, Meda donated pharmaceutical products to Direct Relief. Since 1948, Direct Relief International has helped people in extremely difficult situations to improve their quality of life. Direct Relief supports charitable health services by donating high-demand medicines, prescription drugs, medical supplies and equipment, personal care products, and nutritional supplements, as well as by providing targeted capital donations and health worker education.