Isaac Kaye
Isaac Kaye is Deputy Chief Executive of the IVAX Corporation and Chairman of Norton Healthcare. He gave the Labour Party more than £5,000 in both 1997 and 2000, and £100,000 in June 1999.
The Ivax Corporation is a huge Florida-based health company. Norton Healthcare, the largest generic drugs company in Britain, is a subsidiary of IVAX. Kaye earned $550,301 at IVAX in 1998 (plus share options worth up to $1.5 million) and $521,520 in 1997. He lives in a luxury apartment in Grosvenor Square, London.
In 1996, Norton Healthcare was severely condemned by the British Pharmaceutical Association for offering "unnacceptable inducements" (including mountain bikes and Marks and Spencers vouchers) to pharmacists who increased their orders for Norton products. Kaye refuses to recognise Trade Unions at Norton Healthcare because they are "not in line with company philosophy"!
In 1996-7 Norton received a £990,000 Regional Selective Assistance grant from the Government to set up a new plant in London. In October 1998 it closed down all its other manufacturing and packaging plants in South East England and moved them to Ireland, cutting 500 jobs in the process. This "re-structuring" helped the IVAX Corporation's share price to rise by 80% in 1998 - Kaye is the second largest shareholder, with a stake worth $136 million held by the I. Kaye Family Trust (via a Guernsey-based company called Charter Trust, which in turn hold the shares via another company called Azure Ltd).
When Frank Dobson was Health Minister he called on the NHS to save money by buying cheaper generic drugs, rather than expensive name brands. However, as NHS spending shifted to the generic drugs, their prices increased too - for instance, by 1999 the price of a pack of Norton Healthcare Thyroxine tablets had increased from £6.84 12 months earlier, to £44.89! As a result the NHS doesn't save money, but the IVAX Corporation makes huge profits. IVAX's "Easi-Breathe" inhaler has been named a Millennium Product by the Government and is displayed in the Dome.
The IVAX Corporation's other subsidiaries include Zenith Goldline Pharmaceuticals, Goldcaps inc., Diamedix Corporation, Baker Norton Pharmaceuticals, Immunovision and DVM Pharmaceuticals (all based in Florida), Gelkaps GmbH (Germany), Elvetium S.A. (Argentina), Baker Norton Asia (Hong Kong), Delta Biologicals (Italy) and Galena a.s. Opava (Czech Republic).
