Sanofi finds CEO replacement; poaches Paul Hudson from Novartis

By PharmaCompass

2019-06-13

Impressions: 100

Sanofi will soon have a non-French CEO, as Olivier Brandicourt (63) gets ready to brace retirement. The French drugmaker has poached its CEO from Novartis AG. The company named Paul Hudson, CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, as its new chief.

Hudson is a British pharmaceutical executive with an international pedigree. The 51-year-old executive will take over in September from Brandicourt. His recruitment is likely to help Sanofi bolster its pipeline of medicines and deal with growing pressure on drug prices in the US.

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan congratulated Hudson and named Marie-France Tschudin, a Swiss citizen who’s heading cancer group Advanced Accelerator Applications (which was acquired by Novartis in 2017), as Hudson’s replacement.

Hudson had joined Novartis three years ago, after serving as the US pharma chief for AstraZeneca. As the CEO of Sanofi, Hudson will have to take on several challenges facing the drugmaker, such as its slow moving R&D team, and probes into its diabetes drugs. In the US, insulin makers such as Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have been facing investigations over rising insulin prices.

In 2018, Brandicourt faced a 25 percent pay cut as the company suffered major sales declines in its flagship diabetes unit. Even though Sanofi has executed major alliances with Regeneron and Alnylam on groundbreaking drugs, the company is perceived as sluggish, taking a long while to execute M&As under Brandicourt that have led to some frustrating misses in the past.

Hudson will also have his hands full trying to turn around Sanofi’s cholesterol therapy Praluent (alirocumab), whose sales have been plummeting.

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