GSK’s top scientist jumps ship in new blow for pharmaceutical firm
Pharmaceuticals company GSK’s chief scientific officer is jumping ship, dealing a blow to the drugmaker as it seeks to rebuild its pipeline of new medicines and gears up for a corporate split in the summer.
Hal Barron, the highly-regarded American scientist and veteran of Roche and Genentech, was one of GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley’s key hires a few months after she took the helm in April 2017.
His departure, after just four years in the job, comes at a critical time, as GSK is under pressure from the activist investor Elliott Management, a New York hedge fund, to improve its operational and share price performance.
Barron, 60, will be replaced by Tony Wood as GSK’s chief scientific officer on 1 August, when he joins the biotech Altos Labs, based in the San Francisco bay area, which reportedly counts the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among its backers. Barron will stay on GSK’s board as a non-executive director, providing advice on research and development.
Panmure Gordon analyst David Cox said: “Dr Hal Barron arrived with great fanfare a few years ago and is highly regarded in the industry. The fact that GSK is in the process of spinning off its consumer health business means there is a lot of pressure on R&D (and M&A) to come up with new innovative products for what will be the ‘new GSK’ post-split. They need to get R&D right and do not have the best track record in recent times.”
The drugmaker’s plans for a summer stock market flotation of the consumer health venture it has with Pfizer have been thrown into disarray by news of a £50bn offer from Unilever at the weekend.
GSK has resisted pressure from Elliott to sell off the business, and said it had rejected three bids from the Marmite and Dove soap maker because they
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