Does Fred Hassan even read his own company's SEC filings?

[UPDATED:4.24.08: Mr. David P. Hamilton, at bnet.com/pharma has hat-tipped my story, and done a much better job of explaining it -- as did pharmalot.com, earlier. . . . cool!

Call transcript from seeking alpha is up. Also, it seems Mike Huckman reads this blog. See his middle 'graphs -- Eerie.]

This simply deserves its own post, from the very end of this morning's Q1 Earnings Conference Call:

The Morgan Stanley analyst, [I missed her name] Ms. Jami Rubin, just flat-out got stiff-armed, by CEO Fred Hassan, at the very end of the call -- she asked Schering to help "quantify the Vytorin/Zetia equity income declines," now expected for 2008 -- and specifically mentioned Merck's owning up to a $700 million loss of income, here.

Well, Fred essentially hung up on her.

He said "we really have no model for this scenario". That is simply false -- from Schering's own '34 Act filing (read: "carries liability for material misstatements/fraud") with the SEC, of yesterday, Schering effectively swore otherwise. Wow.

Yep, just yesterday, Schering filed a Form 8-K with the SEC indicating that its joint venture entity, an entity "under common control" (in SEC parlance, that is, shared 50/50 with Merck) had made a "range of estimates" for the equity income fall-off, in 2008. Applicable SEC literature requires disclosure of that range.

"No model", indeed. Fred -- what are you thinking? Did you even look at that Form 8-K, yesterday, before your lawyers filed it?

Or, maybe he just needs to "try the decaffeinated brands. . . . they are very tasty!". . . .[and maybe I do, too(!)].