Advertisement

Sanofi challenges will test likely new boss's pedigree

By Andrew Callus PARIS (Reuters) - Olivier Brandicourt, the Paris-educated doctor and head of Bayer AG's healthcare arm who is widely tipped as the new boss of Sanofi , comes with the right scientific and cultural pedigree but faces some daunting corporate challenges. The 59-year-old Frenchman who researched tropical and infectious diseases before joining the corporate drugs world has been seen as a likely candidate to head the French drugs firm ever since the board suddenly sacked Chris Viehbacher last year. Sanofi Chairman Serge Weinberg said two weeks ago that a successor would be named by the end of March, and several media reports have said Brandicourt could be named soon. Weinberg, caretaker CEO ever since Viehbacher's ousting, told shocked investors in October that Viehbacher had been a poor communicator with the board and must take responsibility for faltering U.S. sales of key diabetes drug Lantus. Sanofi is France's biggest listed company, employing 27,500 people there, making up a third of the country's pharmaceuticals jobs and a quarter of its own worldwide workforce. One of German-Canadian Viehbacher's mistakes was to develop a politically explosive plan to cut French jobs without telling the board. But Brandicourt spent his early adult life in France and should be attuned to national sensitivities. "He has the necessary criteria to do this job. First of all, he is French and therefore well-connected in France and second, he knows the American market, which is important for a large pharmaceutical company," said Norbert Janisch, fund manager with Raiffeisen Capital Management in Vienna. Germany's Bayer recruited Brandicourt only 17 months ago from among top executives of Pfizer , where he rose through the ranks and worked on Lipitor, the U.S. firm's top-selling cholesterol drug, as it went off patent. Lantus, which accounts for over 30 percent of Sanofi's profits, is itself due to lose patent status this year. A replacement, Toujeo, is awaiting U.S. regulatory approval and is set for launch by June - arguably the most important of six drug launches for 2015 - a much busier schedule than average that includes another potential big seller, Praluent, an anti-cholesterol treatment. Brandicourt is also seen as the right man to boost Sanofi's emerging markets portfolio, which represents a third of revenue. After earning his medical degree, Brandicourt spent eight years with the Paris Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital focussed on malaria research in West and Central Africa and worked as a doctor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sanofi plans to launch a vaccine for dengue fever this year. Dengue, like malaria, is one of the tropical diseases that is beginning to attract the attention of big drugs firms. Brandicourt also has takeover credentials that may prove useful at a time when companies pressured by generic drug competition are all becoming either predators or prey. During his brief Bayer tenure, the group bought Merck & Co Inc's consumer care business for $14.2 billion (9 billion pounds) and Norwegian cancer drug developer Algeta for $2.9 billion. Sanofi and Bayer declined to comment. (Reporting by Andrew Callus and Noelle Menella in Paris, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Alexandria Sage and Susan Thomas)