June 3, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Paris-based Sanofi has hired former Obama Administration bureaucrat Suresh Kumar to act as the company’s executive vice president of External Affairs.
Kumar was also appointed a new member of Sanofi’s Executive Committee. With an extensive background in the pharmaceutical industry and government, Kumar is best known for serving as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service for the Obama Administration.
Born and educated in India, Kumar is a U.S. citizen. Most recently Kumar was a partner with business consultancy Oliver Wyman, directing the company’s Public Sector Practice and participating in the firm’s Health and Life Sciences Team. His pharma background includes Johnson & Johnson in 1978, Warner Lambert from 1989 to 1999, and back to Johnson & Johnson as a member of the Group Operating Committee and international vice president of the company’s Worldwide Consumer Pharmaceuticals business in 1999.
Kumar began his government work in 2006 when he was appointed Special Advisor on Sub-Saharan Africa for the Clinton Foundation. In that role he headed initiatives to promote economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and spearheaded programs to improve farmers lives through the import and use of fertilizer in Rwanda.
“Suresh brings a genuinely unique profile to Sanofi that includes a diversified, international career within the healthcare industry, public sector leadership experience and an intimate understanding of GMOs,” said Olivier Brandicourt, chief executive officer of Sanofi in a statement. “Suresh’s deep relationships with business and government leaders worldwide and his passion for making an impact on improving lives through healthcare will make Suresh a valuable addition to Sanofi and the Executive Committee.”
Kumar’s extensive business and government experience as an expert on global trade is a good fit for his new duties with Sanofi. The External Affairs role is newly created, and he will also be involved in public affairs and liaising with governments and international organizations. As part of this position, the company’s Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility departments will report to him.
While at Oliver Wyman, Kumar developed the company’s Ebola platform and created multilateral support for it. He has also been a distinguished visiting professor of International Business at George Washington University since May 2012. In his role with the Obama Administration, Kumar led 1,500 trade specialists in 109 U.S. cities and 129 locations worldwide. Kumar also was the president and managing partner of Kaizen Innovation from 2003 to 2010 with a focus on global management, marketing and global development.
Will PfizerKline Become the Next Pharma Player?
The speculation surrounding a possible bid from Pfizer Inc. for struggling GlaxoSmithKline is heating up, after one closely-watched biotech analyst said in a note last week that Pfizer buying the company would “unlock access to its balance sheet and improve its tax situation.”
Gregg Gilbert, a biotech analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to investors “Introducing PfizerKline” that he thinks a deal would be “materially accretive” for both companies. Gilbert estimated that a bid priced at $29.86 a share, via half stock and half cash, which would push up Pfizer’s earnings per share by 10 percent to 16 percent beginning in 2016.
“We believe that the company has a sense of urgency to create value by leveraging the power of its balance sheet to do needle-moving deals,” Gilbert wrote. “Since media reports in the past have pointed to the potential for a Pfizer/GSK combination, we are revisiting that theme.”
We want to know, dear readers, if you agree? Should Glaxo continue going it alone, or might Pfizer buy it and create one of the world’s largest pharma players in history?
