Haruo Naito Director, President, and CEO (Representative Executive Officer)

As a human health care (hhc) company, we put patients and their families first in our thoughts, contribute to increasing the benefit they receive, and adhere to compliance in our daily operation.

We are committed to the creation of “patient value.” We believe that the creation of “patient value” lies in “satisfying unmet medical needs,” “ensuring a stable supply of high-quality products,” and “provision of information of drugs' safety and efficacy.” We are confident that revenue and earnings will be generated as a consequence of the fulfillment of our mission to “create patient value.” We place importance on this positive sequence of the mission and ensuring results. This is the way we do our business, and the way the Articles of Incorporation govern.

Fiscal 2009, or the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010, was a year that can be called epochal in light of how powerfully the results of Eisai's inhouse research emerged. For example, we submitted an application for approval of a 23mg higher dose formulation of the Alzheimer's disease treatment Aricept® in the United States; submitted applications for the approval of the anti-cancer agent E7389 (generic name: Eribulin) in Japan, the United States, and Europe; and submitted an application for approval of a 50mg extended-release formulation of the proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drug for 50mg gastrointestinal disorders Pariet®/Aciphex® in the United States and Europe. Fiscal 2010 will be an extremely important year for the Company, as it will be striving to ensure that all necessary preparations are made for the marketing of those or those new drugs so that it can deliver them to patients as quickly as possible. The goal of contributing to the betterment of patients' welfare is included within our Articles of Incorporation as a key part of Eisai's corporate philosophy, and we are, therefore, extremely pleased to report that we are coming increasingly close to being able to project the dates on which we will be able to provide patients with the previously mentioned outstanding new drugs that we have created in-house.
Aricept® has played a significant role in supporting the Eisai Group's growth, and the U.S. substance patent for that product will expire this November; on the other hand, our corporate acquisitions and other strategic measures designed to bolster our operations in the oncology and critical care fields have led to considerable business growth in those fields, where we have progressively formed new franchises. Moreover, looking at our operations in geographic regions, our integrated business systems for ethical drugs, OTC products, diagnostics, and generic drugs in the important country of Japan have enabled us to grow more rapidly than the market, and we have also achieved rapid growth in China and other emerging markets. We will be doing our utmost to realize the objectives of our medium-term road map, which calls for optimally balancing operations in franchise fields and geographic regions to maintain robust performance during the next two years and then leveraging our copious R&D pipeline to realize dynamic growth in 2013 and subsequently.
The pharmaceutical companies' operating environment is changing greatly owing to such situations as the increasing importance of emerging areas, the progress of health-care reforms in the industrialized countries, and the evolution of the disease structure. By creating business models that respond to those changes, the Eisai Group is determined to continue realizing the corporate philosophy articulated in its Articles of Incorporation while making steady strides forward with regard to generating sustained increases in its corporate value.