Brutal cull of the Glaxo chieftains
New boss axes 50 of top team in under a year
A RUTHLESS reshuffle at Glaxosmithkline has seen boss Emma Walmsley replace nearly half of her senior executives in less than a year.
The radical overhaul of the top tier of Britain’s eighth biggest company has seen Walmsley, 48, replace 50 of the 125 top managers in just 283 days in charge.
It is the biggest shake-up at the pharmaceutical giant in years, as the most powerful woman in British business transforms the firm into a global pioneer of drugs research.
It is part of plans set out by Walmsley, who took over as chief executive last April, to shift Glaxo’s focus back towards making blockbuster drugs.
She has said its pharmaceuticals arm and research and development are top priorities as it seeks to build a pipeline of new medicines.
A source close to the company yesterday said Walmsley was seeking to bring in talent and ideas from world-leading firms to boost sales, development technologies and utilise new ways of using reams of clinical data.
High profile hires from outside the FTSE 100 giant include former Walmart chief information officer Karenann Terrell, Google digital chief Marc Speichert, Unilever executive Tamara Rogers and Novartis finance chief Tobias Hestler.
She also poached GSK’s global pharmaceuticals president Luke Miels from arch-rival Astrazeneca and appointed Tony Mills, from Pfizer, as her head of platform technology and science.
Meanwhile, she has also promoted internally, with Kate Knobil going from chief medical officer of pharmaceuticals to chief of the entire group.
US commercial chief Deborah Waterhouse is also boss of ViiV, Glaxo’s HIV business.
The reshuffle comes after Walmsley vowed to make major changes last year.
At the time she said up to 200 bosses at the company could be changed. So far the company has confirmed 40pc of a 125 ‘subset’ of that number have been replaced. Further changes are seen as likely. The overhaul is the latest example of Walmsley putting her own stamp on Glaxosmithkline.
In July she revealed plans to jettison 30 clinical trials and 130 non- core brands, re-focus the company’s attention on the US, embark on a £1bn cost- cutting drive and plough 80pc of spending into four areas of research.
She said the business had previously spread itself too thinly and should focus on researching respiratory, HIV, oncology and immune-inflammation drugs.
‘We need to bring more edge, more of a performance focus, more accountability, more pace into our decision making and definitely more cost and cash consciousness,’ she said.
‘We need to have the right kind of discipline on whether something is truly going to be competitive and bring in a commercial voice much earlier than we have done before.’
Ahead of a new pipeline of medicines the firm hopes will come through in the 2020s, Walmsley has said a vaccine for shingles, a three-in- one inhaler for chronic lung disease and a two- drug treatment to combat HIV will be Glaxo’s main focus in the next few years. Shares fell 0.5pc, or 6.6p, to 1346.8p.