It didn’t take long at all. Almost immediately after President-elect Donald J. Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be his choice to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, investors in vaccine makers lost more than $8 billion in market value in one day: Thursday, November, November 14.
Before I say another word or you presume where I’m going with this, let me make this clear. My charge here is to write on several things, one of which is leadership. I do not write on finance, investments, or financial markets, but it is within my purview to comment on leadership decisions, strategies, and so on.
There is a loud and unabashedly public conversation going on about this appointment in which Kennedy’s appropriateness for the job is being called to task. Reserving my personal view, the market’s reaction – which few observers believe is over – speaks volumes.
I look at it this way. The vaccine business is only a part of the pharmaceutical universe, and $8 billion is not a whole lot of the overall big picture. But there is a big picture and it’s this. The pharmaceutical business in the United States in 2023 measured approximately $714 billion, which is 2.9% of the total U.S. GDP. That’s more than significant. Any time you can shake the rafters of something that large, there are consequences and subsequent fears moving forward.
We’re not overlooking the perspective here, that the $8 billion loss was a hit to investors in vaccine makers, not the whole industry, but only a fool would say that it ends there. Given the questionable nature of this appointment, a logical – and fair – question would be: What’s next? What will be the next shoe to drop and when will it drop?
As a leadership advisor (among other roles) with 27 years’ experience across 25 industries, this much I know. Eventss like this do not foster confidence, and decision-making becomes, in a preventative way, defensive. Plans change, strategies morph, and development is often curtailed. Pessimism creeps over the land, and as General Dwight Eisenhower used to say, “Pessimism never won any battle.”
On the upside, the American vaccine industry is filled with some of the smartest leaders and scientist in the world – they did, indeed, break vaccines through into the age of mRNA – so we can have confidence that they will come through here.
But for the moment – and with lots more suspense remaining – we can expect more of the same.