Ousted Sanofi CEO Lands Next Gig

February 27, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor

Ousted Sanofi chief Christopher VIehbacher has finally landed another gig, with PureTech, a science and technology research and development company, which said Friday that he will join its board of directors and serve in an advisory capacity to the firm’s 12 pipeline companies.

PureTech made no mention of Viehbacher’s infamous exit from the French Fortune 500 drugmaker in October, when he was unceremoniously fired after continued tensions with the company’s executive management.

"It's has been a pleasure to know Chris for many years and I am very excited that we will be working together more closely now," said Robert Langer, PureTech co-founder and senior Partner. "The PureTech Board is delighted to have him join us and to have access to his insights as our pipeline advances toward commercialization."

PureTech has a varied portfolio of companies focused on identifying, inventing and commercializing new products and technologies in the healthcare sector. Its roster includes Vedanta Biosciences, Gelesis, Entrega, Folica, Karuna, Tal Medical and Akili Interactive Labs..

Sanofi’s board of directors fired Viehbacher on Oct. 29 because of “strategic differences,” including Viehbacher’s plan to sell the company’s portfolio of mature drugs worth about $7.9 billion.

Although Viehbacher was popular with shareholders because he managed to double the firm’s stock price during his tenure, management had long been at odds with him, particularly because he was the first non-French Sanofi chief executive. When he moved his family to Boston last year, spending only about a third of his time in France, the board acted to remove him.

Still, after a months-long uphill battle to name a successor, Sanofi is once again receiving intense criticism from lawmakers this week, after the details of its compensation package for new Chief Executive Officer Olivier Brandicourt were branded excessive and “incomprehensible.”

Under the terms of his new contract, Brandicourt could walk off with as much as $4.5 million in a “golden handshake” payment in addition to making $4.76 million a year. That base figure is comprised by a fixed annual salary of $1.36 million a year, which is supplemented by a performance-related bonus of between 150 to 250 percent, as well as stock options and performance shares.

Sanofi has said the one-off $4.5 million payment is intended to be a “reimbursement” for benefits lost when Brandicourt leaves his current job at Bayer AG to becomes Sanofi CEO.

That is much too sweet a deal for French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll, who told RTL radio the pay package was "incomprehensible"--especially for the country’s largest listed company.

"These people, when they have hardly taken the reins of a company--which is to say they haven't yet taken any risk--are already assured to get a disproportionate package," Le Foll said.

Former presidential candidate Segolene Royal, the current current energy and environment minister, echoed Le Foll’s comments and admonished large companies, saying "some self-discipline is needed."

"Drugs are reimbursed by taxpayers, so it's all of the French people who pay into the health system and reimburse drugs who are going to pay the golden handshake," Royal said on BFM TV. "Some decency is in store, especially from a pharmaceutical company that lives off the social security system.”

Still, no matter how much he is paid, Brandicourt has his work cutout for him, with the company’s president, Serge Weinberg, already listing to news outlets the specific tasks that await him when he joins Sanofi in April.

“Most immediately, we were looking for a very strong pharma professional having experience of the U.S. market,” Weinberg told Bloomberg last Friday. “[He must be] able to really master the relationship between research and marketing, which is at the core of the challenges for a pharma group.”

Now, Weinberg said he hoped the new hire will turn his attention to the American market, which accounts for 34 percent of Sanofi’s $44.9 billion 2014 sales. “The U.S. is important to us,” he said. “A lot will be about launches, not only in 2015,” with the U.S. “very high on the priority list.

Brandicourt will now officially take the reins in April. Market watchers have already been analyzing his resume. Brandicourt, 59, originally started out as a researcher of tropical and infectious diseases, but has climbed his way up the corporate ladder, eventually finding himself at Pfizer Inc. .

There he focused on the best selling drug of all time, cholesterol treatment Lipitor, helping the company transition it after it came off patent--a situation he may face again at Sanofi, when its insulin pen Lantus, which accounts for over 30 percent of Sanofi's profits, loses its patent later this year.

Dealmaking could also be key, Weinberg said Friday in his interview.

“We have to be ready to seize opportunities,” he said. “I would like us to be a little bit more proactive than what we’ve been.”

Brandicourt will also need to immediately turn his attention to the company’s growing pipeline: Sanofi announced in November that it will roll out 18 products by 2020 that expects to bring in $34 billion over the first five years. One of those, Toujeo, will replace Lantus diabetes treatment, and cholesterol drug Praluent.

Because of his infectious disease background, which took him to West and Central Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a doctor with the Paris Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Brandicourt will be a good shepherd for Sanofi’s emerging markets portfolio, which comprises a third of its revenue.

Brandicourt’s focus at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital was malaria research, and Sanofi hopes to launch a vaccine for malaria’s cousin, dengue fever, later this year.

"Sanofi undertook a rigorous selection process to identify the right person to lead Sanofi forward at an important time for our company," said Weinberg. "I am very pleased that Olivier Brandicourt will be the next chief executive officer of Sanofi. Olivier Brandicourt's strong experience combined with his international profile, deep knowledge of U.S. and emerging healthcare markets, and his capability to unite teams will provide new dynamism to Sanofi's strategy of diversification and innovation."

But above all, the fact that Brandicourt is French will be the largest incentive for the famously Francophonic Sanofi, said analysts.

"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," Norbert Janisch, fund manager with Raiffeisen Capital Management in Vienna, told Reuters on Thursday.

“This appointment surely ticks all of the boxes,” Alistair Campbell, an analyst at Berenberg in London, wrote in a note to investors Feb. 19. “The fact that Dr. Brandicourt is a French national is the icing on the cake.”

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