Staff count at the local office of pharmaceutical giant Novartis is expected to double by the end of next year, according to Ivan Micallef, who heads the local operation.
"Business is growing at a good rate," he told The Sunday Times last week. "We are adapting to the new realities due to Malta's membership of the European Union and the volume of Novartis products that we are registering under EU legislation has grown considerably."
Novartis currently employs ten people, all specialists: pharmacists or people with a medical background (with the exception of the financial controller).
A pharmacist by profession, Mr Micallef is currently a CPO (Country Pharma Organisation) head within the Novartis Pharma Central European Countries cluster. He has been with Novartis Pharma for the past 12 years, and has held various management, marketing and sales responsibilities in various countries within Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and at headquarters in Basle, Switzerland.
He was a Middle East board director who oversaw the highest business growth in the 2001-2004 period and was also involved in the setting up of regional offices in Africa, as well as running Novartis Business Excellence programmes in over 50 countries. For the latter he received a Novartis Leadership acknowledgement and award in 2003.
Mr Micallef is also a member of Competitive Malta - Foundation for National Competitiveness. The foundation combines the expertise of a number of chief executives from Malta's leading organisations to develop strategies that can assist Malta to develop a stronger competitive advantage. The foundation is also a partner institute of the World Economic Forum.
Formed in 1996 following the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz, Novartis is the fourth largest drugmaker in the world but it boasts one of the richest 'pipelines' of drugs undergoing clinical trials - 75.
Last year it spent over $4 billion in research and development and has led the field in approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration for novel medicines over the past five years.
Novartis benefits from good patent protection by a range of market-leading products in the medium term, with sales in 2004 of $28.2 billion, and, according to Mr Micallef, it has a leading market share of most products, like Diovan, an anti-hypertensive drug that had sales last year of $3 billion.
Asked for the secret of Novartis's success, Mr Micallef pointed to the vision of the company's chief executive officer, Dr Daniel Vasella, a medical doctor who brings a doctor's perspective to what matters in medicine.
Dr Vasella has backed bold bets on life-saving drugs that would have been non-starters had there been an accountant's or marketer's perspective. He also engineered the successful merger that created a Swiss multinational that not only did not lose key people but actually attracted external talent, thanks also to that vision. It now employs over 81,000 people and operates in over 140 countries.
Although the pharmaceuticals market is "very fragmented", according to Mr Micallef, with typical shares of two or three per cent, critical mass was the most important and all companies in the top ten had this critical mass.
Novartis benefits from the best growth rate among its rivals and also a healthy compounded growth rate. It has the best rank in terms of exposure to generic drugs (which replace branded drugs once their patent has expired).
Commenting on the recent $8.3 billion acquisition by Novartis of two major generic drugmakers, Mr Micallef said that these were just a seventh of the size of Novartis. This still made the company the top generic drug supplier worldwide.
"Despite this, Novartis is still a research-based company, which is the key to its success in the long term," he said.