Change at the top for CDMOs

Two of the major global pharmaceutical CDMOs, Lonza and Alcami, have announced the appointments of new CEOs in early June. There have also been changes in senior positions at Corden Pharma and, imminently, at Cambrex.

The new CEO of Lonza from 1 November will be Pierre-Alain Ruffieux, who is currently head of global pharmaceutical technical operations at Roche, heading a team of 12,000 with responsibility for all aspects of pharmaceutical commercial manufacturing and supply chain operations, technical, QA and regulatory. Before that, he had been with Novartis for over 20 years.

“Manufacturing and process excellence are central to Lonza and our customers’ success. Pierre-Alain has unrivalled experience in these areas in two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies which will also be a great asset to the Lonza Group,” said Albert Baehny, chairman of the board and interim CEO.

It had also previously been announced that Dr Moncef Slaoui is to step down from the Lonza board of directors. This followed his appointment as chief advisor for the US government's ‘Warp Speed’ national vaccine programme.

Alcami, meanwhile, has named Walter J. Kaczmarek III as its new CEO and said that he “will focus on advancing Alcami’s next phase of strategic growth”. Chairman Harry Kraemer said that his “core skills of business development, relationship-building and leading high performing teams will contribute significantly to Alcami”.

Kaczmarek has served in executive roles at multiple pharmaceutical companies, including president of Mallinckrodt’s Multisource Pharmaceuticals division and COO of Aceto. Most recently, he had been president and CEO of Cosette Pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, CordenPharma has gone to Lonza to complete its executive leadership team. Dr Lee Newton, who was hitherto head of Lonza’s small molecule API business business unit, has been named as COO. Newton has spent over 20 years in the industry, joining Avecia in 2002 and formerly serving operations director for Carbogen Amcis.

In early May, William Cashin, who was global head of quality in the Mammalian & Microbial business, joined CordenPharma as chief quality & compliance officer. He had also had extensive industry experience at Alexion, GSK and Pfizer. Both will report to CEO Dr Michael Quirmbach.

Cambrex, finally, has announced that Steven Klosk will retire as CEO and a director on 30 June, after 28 years with the company. In addition, Shawn Cavanagh is stepping down as president, COO and board member after 21 years, but will take on a new role of strategic advisor to the incoming CEO and board for an initial twelve-month period. The Cambrex board said that it is “in the advanced stages of a comprehensive search” a successor to Klosk. In the interim, the company is being led by an ‘Office of the CEO’, made up of chairman Wayne Hewett, CFO Robert Green and Samantha Hanley, general counsel.