Sandoz, Francesco Balestrieri
With Richard Francis stepping down from his position as CEO of Sandoz, Francesco Balestrieri has been appointed the interim CEO of the business.
Amid a ‘multi-year transformation program’ for the business, the company noted that Francis decided he could not stay to oversee the changes due to personal reasons. Francis had been in the role for five years, after having previously worked as SVP of Biogen’s US commercial business, and left the role at the end of March.
Balestrieri moves into the role, on an ad-interim basis, after having been region head for Europe at the Sandoz business. In total, he has worked at Novartis for 25 years – during which time he has worked on both the consumer health care side of the business, since divested to GSK, and the pharma side.
CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, said: "I would like to thank Balestrieri for stepping up to take on this role. His leadership approach and business experience will be of great importance as we continue the Sandoz transformation."