Is‘ Why People Hate Big Pharma’ available?

Valeant Pharmaceuticals is considering yet another makeover.

Having weathered continued accusations of financial malfeasance for the past two years, the scandalplagued Canadian pharma giant has changed its C-suite and made a commitment to tackle its debt load.

Now Valeant says it is “very serious” about changing its name.

“We have thoughts about our name. We are looking at the alternatives,” Chief Executive Joe Papa said Tuesday at the company’s annual meeting in its home town of Laval, Quebec.

Since he replaced disgraced former CEO Michael Pearson last May, Papa has been trying to shake the brand’s bad image and tackle its roughly $30 billion in junk-rated debt.

Valeant was once a favorite stock among hedge funds such as Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square and John Paulson’s Paulson & Co., when the stock rose nearly fivefold, over three years, to near $260 a share in July 2015.

Shares have since fallen below $10, taking the hedgies down with them, as the company faced price-gouging and accounting fraud charges as well as the November arrest of two former execs accused by the Justice Department of “engaging in a multimilliondollar fraud and kickback scheme.”

Nevertheless, Wall Street was encouraged by Papa’s words, with the shares surging 6.7 percent, to $10.31.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Ackman was still smarting from his disastrous investment in Valeant. Ackman built up his stake at an average cost of $190 a share and sold in March at $11 a share.

“What I learned is that [pharmaceutical investing] can be very expensive,” Ackman said in a Bloomberg interview in London that coincided with Pershing Square listing its shares on the London Stock Exchange.