Back in 2010, when Carl Icahn was spooking Henri Termeer and the management of Genzyme, the heavyweight activist investor sent over a list of hand-picked names for new board members that could help shake things up at the company at the time it was grappling with some severe manufacturing problems.
One of those names: Richard Mulligan, a legend in the gene therapy field whose Harvard lab in the 80s included pioneers like James Wilson and Olivier Danos. Mulligan and another of Icahn’s favorites at the time, Alex Denner, had already vaulted on to the board at Biogen in 2009 to push for changes at the top. And they got it, bringing in George Scangos in a management coup in 2010.
