Novartis AG Chief Executive Joe Jimenez is stepping down in January after leading the Swiss pharmaceutical giant through a tumultuous eight years marked by big patent expiries and intensifying scrutiny on drug pricing in the U.S.
After tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Adobe, now it’s the turn of Swiss pharmaceutical behemoth Novartis to name an Indian-origin person as its chief executive officer.
Jimenez will be replaced by Vas Narasimhan as Novartis’s global head of drug development and chief medical officer.
Jimenez has been CEO since 2010, although he has been with the company for a decade. He will step down at the end of January and remain available for advice until his official retirement at the end of August 2018. He will then return home to Silicon Valley.
Novartis is in the midst of a strategic review on the future of its struggling eyecare unit, Alcon. Mr. Jimenez told reporters he planned to complete that review by the end of the year, before he steps down.
Narasimhan, who is currently Novartis’s global head of drug development and chief medical officer, has been with the company since 2005 and is already on its executive committee. Unlike Jimenez, who started his
career in consumer goods, Narasimhan is a physician.“During his tenure, Joe focused Novartis on leading global businesses, while divesting non-core divisions,” Novartis chairman Joerg Reinhardt said in a statement, referring to Jimenez’s decision to offload the company’s animal health business to Eli Lilly and its vaccines and over-the-counter drugs businesses (the latter through the formation of a joint venture) to GlaxoSmithKline.
The news comes days after Novartis scored approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Kymriah, a form of gene therapy that treats leukemia by training the patient’s immune cells to target the blood cancer.
“Vas is deeply anchored in medical science, has significant experience in managing the interfaces between research and development and commercial units and has strong business acumen with a track record of outstanding achievements,” Reinhardt said.
“Under [Jimenez’s] leadership the innovation pipeline was rejuvenated, and we successfully navigated the patent expirations of our two largest products,” Reinhardt said. “We anticipate a smooth transition as Joe built a strong leadership team and mentored his successor.”
The 41-year old Narasimhan who heads the Drug Discovery division runs one of the industry’s largest drug development programs—overseeing 9,600 employees, 143 projects, 500 ongoing clinical trials and a nine billion dollar budget.
Before joining Novartis in 2005, he worked at McKinsey & Company. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in the US and obtained a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government.
In addition, he holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Chicago, also in the US. During and after his medical studies, he worked extensively on a range of health issues in developing countries.
