Implementation of digitalization in the industry sees big companies looking to facilitate and increase the focus on their digital expertise.
Digitalization is one of the factors that led pharmaceutical companies to reshape the structure of their leadership during the past month.
Concurrently, soon-to-be-launched companies are preparing for their coming out as their management teams are finalized, whilst other small companies acquire talent from bigger ones to take their next step forward.
Implementation of digitalization in the industry sees big companies looking to facilitate and increase the focus on their digital expertise.
Digitalization is one of the factors that led pharmaceutical companies to reshape the structure of their leadership during the past month.
Concurrently, soon-to-be-launched companies are preparing for their coming out as their management teams are finalized, whilst other small companies acquire talent from bigger ones to take their next step forward.
Throwing the spotlight on industry digitalization and the technology evolution in its corporate environment, Bayer hired Bijoy Sagar to be its chief information technology & digital transformation officer.
The appointment follows the retirement of Daniel Hartert, Bayer’s chief information officer, who will be leaving after 12 years of working for the pharma giant.
Sagar’s appointment will take effect on June 1, 2020, and his role will be to “drive forward our digital transformation and complete the transition we have initiated in IT,” stated Wolfgang Nickl, the company’s CFO.
On his side, Hartert commented that “The groundwork for the IT organization at Bayer has been laid, paving the way for Bijoy and the IT leadership team to take the digital transformation at Bayer to the next level.”
Sagar joins Bayer from US medical technology company Stryker, where he held the title of chief digital technology officer, responsible for building the company’s digital strategy. Prior to that, he worked for a number of large pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Eli Lilly, and Merck KGaA.
Sanofi CEO, Paul Hudson, proceeds in a reduction of the members of the organization’s executive committee, from 14 to 10, showing the door to four senior employees; Ameet Nathwani, chief medical and digital officer; Dieter Weinand, EVP of primary Care; Dominique Carouge, EVP of business transformation; and Kathleen Tregoning, EVP of external affairs.
The reshape in the company’s management was announced by the CEO during a Q4 2019 earnings call, and Sanofi confirmed the names of the executives leaving to us, after Bloomberg reported about it first.
During the earning’s call, the company’s CEO commented that “[...] We wanted to allocate more of our central expertise into our business units and increase the accountability,” adding that “there was some personal impact that is structural.”
Sanofi also provided us with an outline of the structure of the new executive committee, in which the roles of heads of external affairs, business transformation, strategy, primary care, and China & emerging markets have been removed.
Following Bayer’s example of focusing on digitalization, Sanofi’s CEO also announced that the management reshaping will include a split between the titles of chief medical officer and chief digital officer, with two different executives taking over these roles.
“I think we are a little bit behind in our agenda on the digital understanding and language capability internally,” said Hudson, and added that the role will have a ‘bias’ towards helping the company improve its user experience and data science management internally, in the ‘short- to medium-term’.
Mylan and Pfizer have come up with the final combination for the board of directors of Viatris – the company that will be created from the merger of the latter’s off-patent manufacturing business, Upjohn, with Mylan.
Viatris, which is expected to launch in mid-2020, subject to regulatory approval, will possess a portfolio of prescription medicines, complex generics, and over-the-counter drug products.
On Pfizer’s side, Ian Read and Jim Kilts will run the newly formed company as members of its board of directors, while W. Don Cornwell will resign from the Pfizer board to serve as a director of Viatris.
Mylan will have eight of its own directors serving on the Viatris board, including JoEllen Lyons Dillon, Neil Dimick, Melina Higgins, Harry Korman, Rajiv Malik, Richard Mark, Mark Parrish and Pauline Mohr.
Finally, the board of Viatris will include executive chairman, Robert Coury, and the role of CEO will be taken over by Michael Goettler.
Goettler, who is currently group president of Upjohn, has been with Pfizer since 2009, after the latter’s acquisition of Wyeth.
Blaise Coleman, the current EVP and CFO of Endo, will succeed Paul Campanelli in the position of the company’s president and CEO, concurrently becoming a member of the board of directors, the company announced towards the end of February.
The appointment, which will take effect on March 6, 2020, is a result of Campanelli’s retirement, after five years of joining Endo with the acquisition of Par Pharmaceutical.
Coleman has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining, he held a number of leadership roles with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, after beginning his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In his current role, Coleman will be succeeded by Mark Bradley, Endo’s SVP of Corporate Development & Treasurer. Bradley has been with Endo since 2007, holding several financial and strategic development leadership positions, after having worked with Deloitte and Ernst & Young.
After 10 years of working for Pfizer, Robert Abraham leaves the role of SVP and group head of Oncology R&D at the pharma giant to take over as the CSO of Vividion Therapeutics.
Abraham joined Pfizer in 2009 following the acquisition of Wyeth, where he was VP and head of Oncology Discovery.
Vividion was launched in 2017 as a spin-out from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, US, to develop small molecule drug products for traditionally inaccessible targets, working on the fields of oncology and immunology.
In April 2019, the company raised $82m (€74.1m) in Series B financing to support its research based on a platform that enables screening of small molecules against proteins in native biological systems.
