There are some changes taking place in the C-suites at Shire.
There are some changes taking place in the C-suites at Shire. The company announced that the company’s head of Research and Development (ad interim), Howard Mayer, will become chief medical officer effective January 2018. Replacing him is former Bayer executive Andreas (Andy) Busch, who will be executive vice president, Head of Research and Development, chief scientific officer, and a member of Shire’s Executive Committee.
Busch is currently the head of Drug Discovery and serves as a member of the Bayer Pharmaceuticals’ division Executive Committee. He was with Bayer for 13 years, taking on increasingly responsible roles. These positions included senior vice president, Head Discovery Europe at Bayer HealthCare and executive vice president, Global Head Drug Discovery. Before joining Bayer, he was Global Head of Cardiovascular Research at Hoechst and Sanofi-Aventis.
“Andy is an outstanding scientist with extensive experience leading research and development functions, and an established track record of building broad portfolios that encompass both biologics and small molecules,” said Shire’s chief executive officer, Flemming Ornskov, in a statement. “We look forward to Andy enabling us to further accelerate our ability to discover novel treatments for our innovative rare disease pipeline.”
Mayer joined Shire in 2012. Before Shire, he was chief medical officer at EMD Serono, a division of Merck KGaA. He received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York with an internship and residency at Mount Sinai Hospital and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School.
“Howard is an established leader at Shire and in the industry, with extensive clinical development and regulatory experience across a variety of therapeutic areas,” Ornskov said in a statement. “He has been an integral component to building and advancing Shire’s pipeline with nearly 40 programs in the clinic, including 17 in later stages of development. I am confident he will thrive in his new role, as we continue to seek to deliver novel rare disease treatments to patients in need.”
On Nov. 20, the company announced that Thomas Dittrich was joining the company as chief financial officer and as an Executive member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. Ditrich was chief financial officer and Executive Committee member at Sulzer Ltd. Before that, he was vice president, Finance Corporate Planning and Chief Accounting Officer of Amgen from 2010 to 2014. He will take on this new position in early 2018.
“Thomas’s wealth of experience while leading the finance teams at numerous multinational companies, including Amgen for several years, will be a tremendous asset for Shire as we continue to execute as the leading global biotech focused on rare diseases,” Ornskov said in a statement. “His unique financial skillset and results-oriented mentality make him the right person to lead Shire’s finance function.”
Thomas will replace the current chief financial officer, Jeff Poulton. Poulton has been with Shire since July 2003. Prior to that, he was manager of Financial Planning at Cinergy. It was announced in August that Poulton was leaving the company at the end of this year to join Boston-based Indigo Ag as its new chief financial officer.
