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| Celgene CEO Bob Hugin |
With Celgene ($CELG) CEO Bob Hugin working through his 15th year at the company, an internal race to spot his eventual successor appears to be in progress, and the Big Biotech's latest round of promotions provides some clues to its future leadership.
The company is promoting Mark Alles, the president of its banner hematology and oncology business, to the role of chief operating officer, and selecting current CFO Jacqualyn Fouse to take his place, two executives groomed to contend for the top spot, according to ISI analyst Mark Schoenebaum.
"Bottom line is that it appears to me like the company is basically telling the Street that Jackie and Mark are the clear leading internal candidates for CEO once Bob moves on (which I personally don't expect for several more years)," Schoenebaum wrote in an investor note. "Very few CFOs advance directly to the CEO chair in the drug industry. Thus, allowing Jackie to now run Celgene's largest global business fills a potential hole in her résumé."
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| Mark Alles |
Alles has long been considered to be the leading internal candidate to replace Hugin, Schoenebaum noted, joining Celgene in 2004 and serving stints as head of marketing and chief commercial officer before taking the helm of the biotech's cancer division. Fouse, who came aboard as CFO in 2010, served the same role at a pre-Novartis ($NVS) Alcon Laboratories and has managed the finances of Swissair Group and Nestle.
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| Jacqualyn Fouse |
Just who will succeed Hugin is anyone's guess, and the CEO, who also serves as chairman of PhRMA, has given no indication that he plans on abdicating anytime soon. The biotech veteran has presided over Celgene's best years, cashing in on the multiple myeloma-treating Revlimid and investing the proceeds in a promising pipeline of internal candidates and creatively in-licensed therapies from partners big and small. Since Hugin took over in 2010, Celgene has nearly tripled its market cap to around $60 billion.
Separately, Celgene is appointing Peter Kellogg to take up Foust's CFO post come July, poaching a finance chief who served the same role at Merck ($MRK) and Biogen Idec ($BIIB).
- read the announcement
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