New chief executive for Takeda
pharmafile | March 4, 2015 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Actos, Millennium, Nycomed, Takeda, Yasuchika Hasegawa, christophe weber
Japanese pharma giant Takeda has added the title of chief executive to its representative director, president and chief operating officer Christophe Weber – who starts the big promotion in April.
Weber was hotly-tipped for the role as Pharmafile reported a while back, and now he replaces Yasuchika Hasegawa as chief who will remain chairman of the board, while the position of COO will no longer exist, the Japanese drugmaker has said.
Weber joined Takeda last year having been at GSK for 20 years, lastly as the president of its vaccines division in Belgium. This announcement means Weber becomes the first non-Japanese leader in Takeda’s 230-year history.
The company has been making acquisitions and hiring senior executives from overseas to globalise its business over recent years.
Weber says: “First, I would like to thank Yasuchika Hasegawa and the board of directors for their trust. I am honoured and thrilled with the role of chief executive and determined to fulfill my duties. I will devote all my energy to leading the new Takeda organisation from April 2015.”
Hasegawa adds: “Since he became COO of the company last April, I have been supporting Christophe and at the same time carefully observing his performance as a chief executive successor. I have concluded that he is ready to assume Takeda’s CEO role, and therefore I have decided to appoint him chief executive when the new organisational structure takes effect in April.
“I am confident that Christophe will blaze a new trail in our efforts to help people realise better health and a brighter future.”
Weber joins on the back of the Japanese drugmaker spending around $20 billion on acquisitions in recent years, buying Millennium Pharmaceuticals to expand in cancer therapies in 2008, and Nycomed three years later to develop in emerging markets.
He has recently been quoted as saying that 2015 for Takeda is an ‘investment year’ and that it should start to see new sales and profit growth. The Osaka-based firm has been forced to seek new drugs to replace revenue generated from its blockbuster diabetes medicine Actos, which faced generic competition in 2012.
Brett Wells
Related Content
Takeda presents positive results from trial of chronic kidney disease treatment
Takeda Pharmaceuticals has announced positive results from a proof-of-concept study of mezagitamab (TAK-079) to treat …
Takeda announces launch of Framework to help support patient access to life-extending combination treatments
The Conceptual Implementation Framework outlines critical points within the UK healthcare access ecosystem to help …
Biomarkers used in trial to prevent systematic onset of Crohns Disease before it begins in Europe-first project
Takeda, a global biopharmaceutical company, is due to launch a project, INTERCEPT, which will use …
