- Push-out Score determined
- After about five and a half years in the position
- Praise for Vounatsos
- Search for a successor
- Vounatsos spoke at length and said 183 words
(exechange) — Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 3, 2022 — Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of Biogen, leaves. As announced by Biogen Inc. in a news release and in a regulatory filing published on Tuesday, May 3, 2022, Michel Vounatsos leaves his post as chief executive officer at the biotechnology company, after about five and a half years in the role, effective when his successor is appointed.
Biogen will undertake a search for a successor.
“This is the right time”
Michel Vounatsos’s departure from the CEO post is explained as follows. Stelios Papadopoulos, Chairman of the Biogen Board of Directors, said: “This is the right time to transition to a new leader who will build Biogen’s next chapter on the strong foundation existing today.”
Precise information regarding Michel Vounatsos’s future plans was not immediately available.
Biogen said: “Biogen announced today that it has begun a search for a new Chief Executive Officer. Michel Vounatsos will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer and on the Company’s Board of Directors until his successor is appointed.”
Share price decline since January 2017
The announcement follows a decline in Biogen Inc.’s share price of 29% since January 2017. January 2017 is the month in which Vounatsos’s tenure as CEO began.
In the position of CEO since 2017
Michel Vounatsos became CEO of the Company in 2017.
Vounatsos has served as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and one of the Company’s directors since January 2017.
Prior to that, from April 2016 to December 2016, Vounatsos served as the Company’s Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer.
Prior to joining Biogen, Vounatsos spent 20 years at Merck & Co., Inc., a pharmaceutical company, where he most recently served as President, Primary Care, Customer Business Line and Merck Customer Centricity.
In this role, he led Merck’s global primary care business unit, a role which encompassed Merck’s cardiology-metabolic, general medicine, women’s health and biosimilars groups and developed and instituted a strategic framework for enhancing the company’s relationships with key constituents, including the most significant providers, payers and retailers and the world’s largest governments. Vounatsos previously held leadership positions across Europe and in China for Merck.
Prior to that, Vounatsos held management positions at Ciba-Geigy, a pharmaceutical company. Vounatsos currently serves as a director of PerkinElmer, Inc., a global scientific technology and life science research company, on the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, on the Supervisory Board of Liryc, the Electrophysiology and Heart Modeling Institute at the University of Bordeaux, as a member of the MIT Presidential CEO Advisory Board and as a member of NetZero International Leadership Counsel.
Vounatsos received his C.S.C.T. certificate in Medicine from the Universite Victor Segalen, Bordeaux II, France, and his M.B.A. from the HEC School of Management in Paris.
Push-out Score determined
The Push-out Score™ determined by exechange gauges the pressure surrounding Michel Vounatsos’s move on a scale of 0 to 10.
exechange reached out to Biogen and offered the company the opportunity to comment on the score.
Read the full story in the exechange report 19.2022 ($).