The new chief executive of Sanofi Aventis, Gérard Le Fur, says the company needs to improve its ‘communication,’ but not by disclosing why diet drug Acomplia (rimonabant) has been stalled for more than a year at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Le Fur, the former research chief at Sanofi who took over this month as CEO, offered the Wall Street Journal the curious explanation that disclosing the issues that are still keeping Acomplia off the market in the U.S. would risk the company’s relationship with the FDA.

While the FDA never comments publicly during consideration of new drug applications, pharmaceutical companies often provide information as to the nature and difficulty of the issues they are discussing with the agency — particularly when the process has dragged on well into a second year.

Le Fur and Hanspeter Spek, Sanofi’s head of pharmaceutical operations who has been the company’s point person in brushing aside questions about the FDA and Acomplia, will get their next chance to decline to comment at Sanofi’s 2006 earnings conference Feb. 13.

Sanofi seems more likely, however, to provide some news to analysts on how sales of Acomplia are developing in Europe, where the diet pill has been on the market in some European Union countries for more than six months.

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