Shire Plc Poaches Bayer AG Exec for Top Job

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Shire Plc (SHP) said Bayer AG (BAYN)’s Flemming Ornskov will take over as chief executive officer of the world’s biggest maker of attention-deficit disorder drugs, following the retirement of Angus Russell next year. Russell, 56, has been with Shire for 13 years and has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 32 years, the Dublin- based company, which has management offices in Basingstoke, England, said today in a statement. The company also reported third-quarter profit that missed analysts’ estimates. Ornskov joins Shire from Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer, where he worked as chief marketing officer and global head of strategic marketing for general and specialty medicine. He takes over a company with a market value exceeding 10 billion pounds ($16 billion) and annual sales of $4.2 billion, built by Russell with more than two dozen acquisitions since 1999. “When I joined it, we were this little specialist company that was like others, reformulating” medicines, Russell said on a conference call with journalists. “That became a model that wasn’t sustainable. Then we got into rare genetic diseases. Now we’re forging our own way.”

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