Executive Profile: Leslie Morgan, CEO of Durbin

Leslie Morgan, CEO of Durbin talks about industry regulations, Managed Access Programmes and the future of pharma

Why did you enter the pharmaceutical industry?

Initially, it was the entrepreneurial spirit I had as a kid that made working in a pharmacy and helping it grow so appealing – I didn’t really know much about the specific industry as a whole back then! But almost as soon as I began, in 1976 when Durbin was just a small pharmacy, I fell in love with what I was doing and I knew it was something I wanted to stay involved in.

What are some of the most impactful changes to the industry you’ve observed during your time at the top?

There are three that spring to mind. The first one is the increase in regulations, which has just made everything more professional and in my opinion, has led to positive changes across the board.

The second one is the rise of Managed Access Programmes (sometimes called Named Patient or Compassionate Use Programs), which have allowed patients to access new medicines much quicker, saving lives and reducing suffering.

The final change was when Durbin started giving charities excess medical products that are still in date – we’ve given around £22m worth of products so far.

What have been your personal career highlights?

The £22m we’ve given to charities is something I’m very proud of and of course I’m honoured to have received an OBE. And an ongoing highlight for me has been seeing (and hopefully helping!) the team here at Durbin grow and develop.

It sounds like a cliché, but watching them arrive, progress and become a group that you can trust and rely upon to do a great job – that’s a really satisfying achievement.

If you had a time machine, are there any strategic decisions you wish you had or hadn’t made over the last 40 years?

There will always be mistakes when you’ve worked for as long as I have, but I think the key is that you learn something from them.

For example, we set up an internet business in 2000 called pharmacybargains.com, which was for price comparison of generic medicines for UK pharmacists. We thought it was a great idea, right up until it lost a lot of money.

But we learned some incredibly valuable lessons from that, and that helped us hugely in projects further down the line. So even if I could travel back to stop us creating pharmacybargains.com, I’m not sure I would.

What changes do you predict for the pharmaceutical industry in the future?

The two I hear about a lot are personalised medicines and greater resistance to antibiotics, and I agree that both are only going to grow as issues in the years to come.

Otherwise, I think the changes will be gradual, incremental ones across the board, rather than game changing developments that revolutionise the whole industry.

At Durbin, we’re always looking to talk to pharma companies at various stages of product development to help them with supply chains across the world, because the differences we make there will change the pharmaceutical industry as a whole moving forwards.

Leslie Morgan is the CEO of Durbin, a specialist pharmaceutical distributor. He joined as a pharmacist in 1976 and worked his way up through the ranks before buying the company in 1999. He was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to the pharmaceutical industry and to charity.