Pfizer exec will become CEO next year

TRENTON, N.J. — The biggest U.S.-based drugmaker will change leaders in January when Pfizer Chief Operating Officer Albert Bourla replaces Chief Executive Officer Ian Read, who has led the company for nearly eight years.

Pfizer Inc. said Monday that Read will become executive chairman of Pfizer’s board of directors.

The move comes after Pfizer’s board in March gave Read an $8 million bonus contingent on boosting Pfizer’s stock price and staying on for up to a year. That allowed Read time to groom Bourla, who had been appointed last January to the newly created chief operating officer post.

The maker of Viagra and the advanced breast cancer drug Ibrance has been dealing for several years with declining revenue as patents expired and generic competition began for a series of big-selling drugs, as have many other drugmakers. For Pfizer, those drugs include Viagra, blood pressure pill Norvasc and high-cholesterol pill Lipitor, which had reigned as the world’s top-selling drug for nearly a decade.

Read, who started working at Pfizer in 1978 as an auditor, spent much of his tenure as CEO trying to pull off mega-acquisitions, the strategy that had enabled Pfizer to leapfrog to the top among U.S. drug makers.

The 56-year-old Bourla also has run the drugmaker’s vaccines, oncology and consumer health care business.