Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd named H. Lundbeck A/S’ Kaare Schultz as its new chief executive officer, ending a seven-month search for a new leader to revive sales and reduce debt at the world’s largest maker of generic drugs.
Schultz, 56, will move to Israel and be based at Teva’s headquarters in Petach Tikva, the company said in a statement yesterday.
He replaces Yitzhak Peterburg, who has been acting chief executive officer since Erez Vigodman left on Feb. 6 by “mutual agreement” with the board.
The new chief executive officer is likely to face pressure from some investors to split the company into two businesses, one focusing on patented specialty medicines and the other on cheap copycat drugs.
Vigodman departed after Teva shares plunged to a 12-year low amid legal challenges to the company’s best-selling patented drug and price pressures on its generics.
Teva’s situation worsened in the months since, as the company lowered its profit guidance and slashed its dividend.
Shares of Teva jumped 7.8 percent to 58.75 shekels as of 10:45 am yesterday in Tel Aviv trading. Its US depositary receipts on Friday rose 0.2 percent to US$15.50 in New York, giving it a market value of US$15.7 billion. The stock has plunged 57 percent in the past year.
Schultz joined Denmark’s Lundbeck in mid-2015 from Novo Nordisk A/S after he was passed up for the top job at the world’s biggest maker of insulin.
He had spent more than 20 years climbing through the ranks there, gathering commercial and operational experience, before being promoted to chief operating officer in 2002.
When he left, he was also president and first in line to succeed then-chief executive officer Lars Rebien Sorensen.
In April 2015, Novo chose to extend Rebien Sorensen’s tenure at the helm. It also eliminated Schultz’s role as chief operating officer, effectively demoting him.
When Schultz took the helm at Lundbeck, it had been without a permanent chief executive officer for more than five months, since Ulf Wiinberg left in November 2014 after failing to disclose a shareholding in a company in which his employer later made an investment.
Recruitment firm Heidrick & Struggles assisted Teva with the search for the new chief, the Israeli company said in its statement.
Peterburg, who stepped down as Teva chairman to become interim chief executive officer, has put several assets up for sale, closed down factories and announced 7,000 layoffs, all in an effort to stabilize Teva’s financial footing.
The Israeli drugmaker’s debt is more than US$30 billion — twice the value of the company — and Teva warned investors that it risks breaching its debt covenants this year if it does not reap the expected US$2 billion from the asset sales.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RESHAPING COMMERCE: Major industrialized economies accepted 15 percent duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger US President Donald Trump has unveiled a slew of new tariffs that boosted the average US rate on goods from across the world, forging ahead with his turbulent effort to reshape international commerce. The baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged at 10 percent from the duties Trump imposed in April, easing the worst fears of investors after the president had previously said they could double. Yet his move to raise tariffs on some Canadian goods to 35 percent threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship, while nations such as Switzerland and New Zealand also saw increased
RSS