On January 31, according to the official website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Zhou Bin, former member of the Party Committee and Deputy General Manager of Sinopharm Group, former Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Shanghai Modern Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervision investigation.
As early as half a year ago, Zhou Bin had stepped down from all positions in Sinopharm and Shanghai Hyundai. According to Sinopharm Modern's announcement, on June 29, 2023, the company received a resignation letter from Zhou Bin, who resigned for personal reasons and no longer held any position. It is worth noting that Hao Chaofeng, who was the company's chief financial officer at that time, resigned at the same time.
Before Zhou Bin fell from power, he was most well-known as the chairman of Modern Pharmaceutical, but before that, Zhou Bin could be said to be a pivotal figure in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2010, the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the central enterprises in the pharmaceutical industry "changed from 5 to 3", and Sinopharm Group absorbed and merged another central pharmaceutical enterprise "Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Research Institute", and Zhou Bin was the president of the Shanghai Medical Engineering Institute at that time.
Founded in 1957, Shanghai Institute of Medical Engineering has played the role of "scientific research institute" and "technological innovation base" of China's pharmaceutical industry for a long time, and was an important engine of China's pharmaceutical innovation at that time. Zhou Bin joined the Shanghai Institute of Medical Engineering in 1990 and has been engaged in the research of medical information for a long time, and has been in charge of modern pharmaceutical since 2002. Zhou Bin often said that he is a "scholar-entrepreneur".
is such a "scholar-entrepreneur" who has not been able to manage his own hands.
The chairman of the board of directors who started from the grassroots level of the medical engineering institute
According to public information, Zhou Bin was born in 1968 and graduated from China Medical University with a bachelor's degree and a doctor's degree. The 22-year-old Zhou Bin entered the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Research Institute and successively served as the director of the information office, the director of the market investment department, the assistant to the president, the vice president and the president.
Zhou Bin studied pharmacology at China Pharmaceutical University. According to media reports at the time, Zhou Bin attended a boarding school since he was a child, and he was very independent, and his favorite thing to do was to soak in the library all day. In the early years, Zhou Bin once revealed his motto: industry is good at diligence and waste, and success is in thinking and destroying.
During his time at university, Zhou Bin had always looked forward to becoming a medical researcher. After graduating in 1990, he came to Shanghai Medical Engineering Institute and has never left the medical engineering hospital system.
Shanghai Institute of Medical Engineering was one of the 17 large-scale scientific research institutes under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission at that time, and it was also the largest medical research unit in China at that time. In June 2004, Hyundai Pharmaceutical was successfully listed, realizing the best combination of industry and capital operation.
In 2008, Zhu Baoquan, the former president of Shanghai Institute of Medical Engineering, stepped down, and Zhou Bin became the party secretary and president of this "pharmaceutical research and development aircraft carrier".
It didn't take long for the wave of merger and reorganization of central enterprises to sweep the pharmaceutical industry. In 2009, the five major central enterprises in the pharmaceutical industry, Sinopharm Group, China Resources, China General Motors, Zhongsheng Group, and Shanghai Medical Engineering Institute, faced the problem of integration and may lose the main position of central enterprises. At that time, Shanghai Medical Engineering Institute was the weakest of the five central enterprises, and it was inevitable that it would be absorbed.
In 2010, the Shanghai Institute of Medical Engineering was clearly classified as Sinopharm, and Zhou Bin became the deputy general manager of Sinopharm Group, as well as the president of the renamed China General Institute of Medical Industry, while still serving as the chairman of Modern Pharmaceutical, and also served as the chairman of China National Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and China National Pharmaceutical Industry Co., Ltd.
In the field of pharmaceutical circulation, Sinopharm Group is a well-deserved leader, and the strength of the pharmaceutical industry is weak; although the Medical Engineering Institute has modern pharmaceutical and other industrial platforms, the main body is a scientific research unit, and the combination of the two did not seem to have much integration advantage at that time. Subsequently, Sinopharm Group continued to integrate its chemical drug assets into Hyundai Pharmaceutical through asset restructuring.
As the chairman of Hyundai Pharmaceutical, Zhou Bin actually undertakes important responsibilities for the revitalization and development of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry sector of Sinopharm. In 2016, Hyundai Pharmaceutical did a major thing: it integrated the chemical drug assets of Wuhu Sanyi, Sinopharm Yixin, Zhijun Pharmaceutical, Pingshan Pharmaceutical, Zhijun Medical Trade, Pingshan Base Operating Assets, Sinopharm Co., Ltd., Sinopharm Weiqida, Shantou Jinshi, Qinghai Pharmaceutical, Xinjiang Pharmaceutical, and Zhongkang Pharmaceutical under Sinopharm Group, with a total value of 7.739 billion yuan.
After this battle, modern medicine has become a lot stronger. In 2016, Hyundai Pharmaceutical's revenue reached 9.162 billion yuan, a sevenfold increase from the restructuring in 2010.
Unfortunately, although Hyundai Pharmaceutical has completed the research and development and application of a number of new drugs under the leadership of Zhou Bin, it is still dominated by generic drugs as a whole. After 2015, China's pharmaceutical regulatory policies have changed, and the combination of policies such as the two-invoice system and consistency evaluation has been introduced, impacting the generic drug market. Since then, the growth rate of Hyundai Pharmaceutical's performance has slowed down, with the company's revenue reaching 11.320 billion yuan in 2018 and only close to 14 billion yuan in 2022.
It was at this critical moment in the company's operation that Zhou Bin, who had worked in the medical engineering hospital system all his life, was dismissed.
Selling expenses remained high, and net profit margin declined year after year
Modern pharmaceutical's "shotgun for gun" largely relies on the asset injection of Sinopharm. The disadvantage of one-time injection is that the products and business models of each enterprise are completely different, and after integration, it brings great management difficulties to modern pharmaceuticals.
In fact, in 2018, Hyundai Pharmaceutical's sales expenses soared by 117.65% to 3.242 billion yuan, and the sales expenses in the following years have not been lower than 3 billion yuan. Correspondingly, the net profit margin of Hyundai Pharmaceutical has continued to decline in recent years, reaching only 6.69% in 2022, far lower than the average net profit margin of 15.3% in the pharmaceutical industry announced by the National Bureau of Statistics that year.
On the face of it, Hyundai Pharmaceutical has become a "unified platform for the development of Sinopharm's chemical and pharmaceutical industry", but it has not really made Sinopharm's pharmaceutical industry sector stronger.
It is worth noting that after the Shanghai Medical Institute was merged into Sinopharm Group, Zhou Bin rarely appeared in the public eye. In a 2010 interview with Shanghai Pharmaceutical magazine, his motto became "studious and humble."
According to the data, in 2013 and 2014, Zhou Bin also participated in the release ceremony of the top 100 pharmaceutical industry list and delivered a speech as the "President of China Pharmaceutical Industry Research Institute". In the following ten years, Zhou Bin no longer stood in front of the release of the top 100 list in this capacity, and his main focus was still on the operation and management of modern pharmaceutical.
In January this year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection issued a document looking forward to the anti-corruption work in 2024, calling for special rectification of industry-wide, systemic, and regional corruption issues, and insisting on investigating bribery and bribery together. The speech of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was announced, which clearly demanded: deepen the rectification of corruption in areas where power is concentrated, capital-intensive, and resource-rich such as finance, state-owned enterprises, energy, medicine, and infrastructure projects, and clean up risks and hidden dangers.
Written by丨Xiaomi
Editor|Jiang Yun Jia Ting
Operation|Han Jinrui
Source: Visual China
Disclaimer: Original content of the Health Knowledge Bureau, please do not reprint without permission