More Quality Problems at Johnson & Johnson (Odious Details Omitted)

by YCharts Staff October 29, 2012

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which has been dealing with a long series of quality problems in its over-the-counter drug and other operations – recalled 157,000 surgical staplers, used in hemorrhoid treatment, after the Food and Drug Administration issued a severe safety warnings on the products.

We’ll spare you the details, uh, richly reported by the Wall Street Journal.

J&J’s diversification – it’s relatively less reliant on pharmaceuticals than many of its more narrowly-focused competitors, as in Pfizer (PFE), Merck (MRK), Novartis (NVS) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) -- is among the factors that has given it a higher valuation, based on PE ratio. But the complexity seems rather hard to manage.