Eli Lilly's CEO and Zyprexa earn accolades

INDIANAPOLIS - Randall Tobias, Eli Lilly and Co.'s chairman and CEO, is the top manager for 1997, and Zyprexa® (olanzapine), Lilly's new product for schizophrenia, is one of the year's top products, according to "Business Week."

The business and finance magazine said it considered financial and share-price performance when it chose its list of top managers for the year.

Under Tobias' guidance, the company's market value rose from $14 billion to $77 billion.

The company also aggressively battered the pharmaceutical market with new products - five within the last two years - which boosted the company's stock price by more than 90% during 1997.

At press time, the company's share price was listed at $663⁄8 per share on the New York Stock Exchange.

Zyprexa, cleared for marketing by the FDA in October 1996, garnered $550 million in sales over the course of its first year on the market.

"Just as Prozac has become an important product for the treatment of depression, Zyprexa has become an important tool in treating symptoms of schizophrenia," said August Watanabe, M.D., Lilly's executive vice president of science and technology.

The medicine has been approved in more than 50 countries and prescribed to more than 770,000 patients. PR