Novartis AG's U.S. Head Steps Down for Personal Reasons
April 21, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
NEW YORK -- Citing personal reasons, Christi Shaw, head of Novartis’s U.S. operations, has stepped down, NJBIZ reported this morning, citing an internal company memo.
Shaw, who has served as head of U.S. Novartis Corporation and Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation since 2014, will be replaced by two people, Fabrice Chouraqui and Tom Kendris. Chouraqui will assume the role of president of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, while Kendris will become president of Novartis Corporation and U.S. country president, NJBIZ reported. Kendris is also expected to continue his role as general counsel of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Both appointees will begin their new positions May 1.
Before assuming her top executive role at the Swiss-based Novartis, Shaw helmed the company’s North American oncology operations from 2010 to 2014. When she took over the top U.S. spot in 2014, she was able to help the company go through a streamlining and restructuring process, NJBIZ reported.
“The company thanks Ms. Shaw for her dedication, passion and commitment, as well as her inspirational leadership, resulting in one of the most successful launches in the industry to date with the introduction of Cosentyx,” the company said in a statement, according to NJBIZ.
Cosentyx is a psoriasis drug. In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Cosentyx for expanded use beyond plaque psoriasis—to treat adults with active ankylosing spondylitis and active psoriatic arthritis.
Shaw’s resignation comes in the wake of accusations the company hosted about 80,000 “sham” events in which the government maintains the drug company “wined and dined” doctors to prescribe the company’s cardiovascular drugs. In March, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan leveled the allegations following Novartis’ settlement of a civil lawsuit related to allegations of kickbacks. In 2013, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan filed the healthcare fraud lawsuit against Novartis alleging that as a result of Novartis’s “kickback scheme, Medicare and Medicaid have issued tens of millions of dollars in reimbursements based on false, kickback-tainted claims.” The latest move by U.S. Attorney Preet Bahara of New York’s Southern District, was filed March 25. The government is seeking information about events the company may have put on to encourage physicians to prescribe the medications. The government is seeking documents to support allegations Novartis “defrauded federal health-care programs of hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade.
In November 2015, Novartis agreed to pay $390 million to settle a civil lawsuit related to the kickback payments to specialty pharmacy companies that distributed the drugs Exjade and Myfortic. Although Novartis paid the amount, they neither admitted nor denied liability. The settlement, which is between Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation, a U.S. subsidiary of Novartis AG, will be paid to both the U.S. government and to state Medicaid programs. The governments of more than 40 U.S. states raised concerns over payments Novartis made to the specialty pharmacy companies it contracts with to entice them to recommend prescriptions to Medicaid and Medicare patients.