Bristol Myers Squibb Co

Two former Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. executives defrauded investors by improperly accounting for $1.5 billion in revenue in 2000 and 2001, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday. Frederick Schiff, former chief financial officer for the No. 5 U.S.

Gilead Sciences Inc. said a second attempt at combining its Truvada HIV drug into a single pill with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Sustiva failed, delaying an application for Food and Drug Administration approval until next year. Shares of Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead fell 4.7% in after-hours trading after closing at $42.68, up 57 cents.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said it had reached an agreement to sell its U.S. and Canadian consumer medicine business to Novartis for $660 million in cash. The division, which reported $242 million in sales last year, includes Excedrin for headaches, cold and flu medicine Comtrex and Keri moisturizers. Novartis' consumer product division includes Ex-Lax laxative, Maalox antacid, Theraflu adult cold and flu treatment and Triaminic for children's coughs and colds.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. agreed to pay $300 million in a deal to defer federal prosecution of a conspiracy charge stemming from an accounting scandal, the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey said Wednesday. Two former executives were indicted for their alleged roles in the scandal.

Amid mounting criticism of advertising drugs directly to consumers, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said Tuesday that it would not promote any of its new medicines directly to patients for at least a year. It is believed to be the first company to make such a promise, but many drug makers have been changing the tenor of their advertising in response to rising complaints from doctors, patients and lawmakers about the amount and accuracy of the advertising.

GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson Inc. may be potential buyers of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s consumer-products business, which includes the Excedrin and Bufferin headache medicines, investors said Wednesday. Bristol-Myers is considering a sale of the assets to focus on its larger pharmaceuticals business, people familiar with the situation said. An acquirer would get a business that generated 2003 sales of $354 million, about 1.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., a drug maker with patents set to expire on four medicines by 2010, said it asked U.S. regulators to approve its once-daily diabetes drug Muraglitazar. If approved, the drug will be sold jointly by Bristol-Myers and Merck & Co., which announced Sept. 30 that it would pull its Vioxx painkiller from the market. Merck in April agreed to pay Bristol-Myers as much as $375 million to share the rights to Muraglitazar. Shares of Bristol-Myers rose 28 cents to $25.83 on the NYSE.

Gilead Sciences Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. announced Monday that they would collaborate on developing the first all-in-one, once-a-day pill to treat HIV infection -- a long-sought goal that would make it much easier for patients to stick with their medication. Currently, the best treatment for acquired immune deficiency syndrome requires patients to take two to four pills a day.