Due Diligence by Michael A. Kahn Page A

uh, with her pantyhose.”
    â€œPantyhose?”
    I giggled. “Just a run.”
    â€œJust a run? Hey, tell her I’ll buy her a new pair. She sounds sexy.”
    â€œWhat?” I said in surprise.
    â€œI love her voice. Deep and husky.”
    â€œShe’s not your type, Bob.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œTrust me.”
    â€œDescribe her.”
    I chuckled. “Well, she’s tall.”
    â€œBlond?”
    â€œActually, yes.”
    â€œSounds better every minute. Built?”
    I chuckled. “You mean chest size?”
    â€œWell, sure.”
    â€œBig.”
    â€œHow big is ’big’?”
    â€œAt least forty-two inches.”
    â€œPraise the Lord.”
    I could barely keep from laughing. “Tell you what, Bob, I’ll fix you two up next time you’re out here.”
    â€œYou’re a true pal, Rachel.”
    â€œDon’t thank me, yet. Meanwhile, back to business. You were telling me about some work you did with a pharmaceutical company.”
    â€œOh, yeah. The due diligence stuff with McNeil Pharmaceutical. Do you know anything about the economics of the drug industry?”
    â€œNot really,” I admitted, taking notes.
    â€œYou can’t sell a new drug in the United States without first going through an incredibly rigorous system of approvals supervised by the Food and Drug Administration.”
    â€œI knew that much.”
    â€œWell, that’s where the economics come in. On average, it takes eight to ten years and fifty to eighty million dollars to bring a new drug from the original concept through the FDA process to the market.”
    â€œWow.”
    â€œExactly. Moreover, the odds against a new drug surviving all the way are steep. The guys at McNeil had statistics showing that only one out of every four thousand drugs that undergo preclinical testing ever makes it to the market. Even if you get past the preclinical phase to the human testing stage, which is pretty far down the process, your odds of making it to the market are still only one of five. You know what that means?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” I mumbled as I finished scribbling: 1 out of 5— human testing to market .
    â€œIt means that you’ve got to do some serious due diligence before you have a sense of what a pharmaceutical company is really worth. For example, you need to find out the status of the IND applications.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œIND. It stands for Investigational New Drug.”
    â€œLet me write that down.”
    As I was scribbling, Jacki came in. “I found it,” she whispered, holding up a bottle of clear nail polish.
    â€œBob, can I have one more pantyhose timeout?”
    â€œNo problem. Tell your secretary I’m falling in love long distance.”
    I rested the receiver against my neck. “Here’s how you do it,” I said to her, reaching for the bottle of nail polish. I unscrewed the top. “Come closer.” She did. I slid out the brush and leaned toward her leg. “Just like this. Put a little dab at the end of the run. Let it dry. It’ll keep the run from getting any longer.” I leaned back with a smile, screwed on the top and held it out to her. “There. All done.”
    Jacki gave me a look of gratitude as she took the bottle of nail polish. “Thanks so much, Rachel.” She glanced down at the stocking. “That’s wonderful.”
    I lifted the receiver to my ear. “I’m back,” I said to Bob.
    â€œWow, that’s better than phone sex.”
    â€œBack to business, stud.” I glanced at my notes. “IND. You said it stands for Investigational New Drug. What’s that?”
    â€œOkay. When a drug company has finished all of its preliminary testing on animals and wants to move to the next stage of the approval process, which is testing the drug on humans, it files an IND application with the FDA. Among other