New Info About Anonymous Letter to Pfizer's Board of Directors

So far only the New York Times has reported on the anonymous letter, allegedly sent by a senior Pfizer executive to the Pfizer board of directors and to some journalists. The letter appears to have been a last minute attempt to persuade the board not to select Jeff Kindler as the new CEO of Pfizer.

This is additional information the New York Times writes in tomorrow's edition:

"Mr. Kindler, however, takes his job under a minor cloud. Earlier this week, a person claiming to be a senior Pfizer employee sent a letter to Pfizer’s board critical of Mr. Kindler. The letter offered no evidence to support its claims, and they cannot be independently verified. But the letter’s author correctly predicted on Wednesday that Mr. McKinnell would resign after Friday’s board meeting."

Clearly, based on the correct prediction of Mr. McKinnell losing his job on Friday, the letter must have been written by one of very few top people within Pfizer.

It is even questionable if anyone but Kindler's two contenders, Ms. Katen and Mr. Shedlarz, or someone close to them, could have known enough to write this letter. After all, it is reasonable to assume that they were literally the only people informed in advance of what would take place. They and the PR persons who wrote today's press release. But the PR people already reported to Mr. Kindler and would have been joyous about this development.

And it is reasonable to conclude that Mr. Kindler will draw the same conclusion.

In the news release announcing his promotion, Mr. Kindler promised that Pfizer “will transform virtually every aspect of how we do business” and reduce “organizational layers to speed decision-making.”

Perhaps it wouldn't be surprising if Mr. Kindler starts his new job by reducing the layer right below him.