Soriot sharpens broom in AstraZeneca C-suite sweep
This article was originally published in Scrip
AstraZeneca's new CEO Pascal Soriot has wasted little time in putting his stamp on the troubled company, eliminating R&D chief Martin Mackay and global commercial head Tony Zook in a management shake up.
The two roles have been eradicated in a reorganization of the leadership team that, for R&D, looks to be emulating Soriot’s erstwhile home, Roche/Genentech, and, in commercial department, seems to be flattening the structure.
With no overall head of R&D, these functions will be looked after through three new positions:
- Early stage development in small molecules (Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, Innovative Medicines);
- Discovery and early stage development in biologics (Bahija Jallal, Executive Vice President, MedImmune); and
- Late stage development (Briggs Morrison, Executive Vice President, Global Medicines Development)
Meanwhile, in place of Tony Zook's executive vice-president, global commercial role, there will be three EVP roles representing each the commercial regions: North America (Paul Hudson), Europe (Ruud Dobber) and International (Mark Mallon).
And overarching these two functions will be another new role – Executive Vice President, Global Portfolio & Product Strategy – which aims to "bridge between the R&D and sales function". This position has yet to be filled.
The commercial aspects of AstraZeneca’s performance has been coming under increasing scrutiny: a forensic examination of the highly disappointing sales trajectory for relatively new drugs such as Brilinta (ticagrelor: Brilique in the US), for instance, has examined all aspects of the drug’s performance.
Soriot, who took over the helm in October after the ousting of previous incumbent David Brennan at the start of last year, needs to invigorate the company after a poor few years, and a disappointing presentation at last week's JP Morgan conference. The CEO said that his new team "draws heavily from the leadership talent within the company", and indeed there are no major new names in the frame, as yet. Morrison joined AstraZeneca about a year ago after roles at Merck and Pfizer, and Pangalos was also brought in from Pfizer.
The other members of the executive leadership team are: David Smith Executive Vice President, Operations & IS; Lynn Tetrault Executive Vice President, Human Resources & Corporate Affairs; Katarina Ageborg Chief Compliance Officer; and Jeff Pott General Counsel.