With pressure piling on for CSL, the Australian vaccine and plasma specialist has elected to part ways with its CEO on the eve of its latest earnings announcement.
Paul McKenzie, Ph.D., who’s served as CSL’s chief executive and managing director for the past three years, is retiring Tuesday, with company insider Gordon Naylor set to take up the CEO post on an interim basis starting Wednesday, according to a Feb. 10 release (PDF) from CSL’s board.
The leadership shuffle comes just one day before CSL unveils first-half results for its 2026 fiscal year, which ends June 30.
The company’s share price has fallen sharply since last August, when CSL unveiled plans to slim down its R&D workforce and spin out its vaccine unit, CSL Seqirus. The company walked back its Seqirus plans in late October, however, with Chair Brian McNamee at the time citing “heightened volatility in the current US influenza vaccine market.”
“Timing will be revisited when we are confident that market conditions would support the maximisation of shareholder value,” he said last fall.
CSL operates across several different business units. Aside from the vaccine-focused Seqirus, there is also CSL Behring, which includes CSL Plasma and focuses on conditions like bleeding disorders, immunodeficiencies and neurological disorders, as well as the iron deficiency and nephrology-focused CSL Vifor.
The company has also faced skepticism around the return on its 2022 acquisition of Vifor, which led to the formation of the eponymous business unit. At a total price point of $11.7 billion, the buyout marks the largest in CSL’s history.
As CSL looks to right the ship, the company’s board has decided McKenzie may not have the skill set the company needs at this juncture.
“When the board sat down recently and looked at our business and thought about where we need to go in the future, we recognized he didn’t have the skills that we wanted for the future,” McNamee said on a call with analysts early Tuesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
McNamee admitted that CSL’s board was “not happy with the performance” of the company, according to the news service.
While CSL hunts for a permanent successor to McKenzie, his interim replacement, Naylor, will be “fully empowered by the board,” with the “mandate to implement any changes necessary to drive the company’s performance,” McNamee said on a call about the transition posted publicly to CSL’s website.
“Interim does not mean I’ll be taking a back seat,” Naylor added on the call.
Naylor is a longtime veteran of CSL, where he’s served for 33 years, including in roles like chief financial officer and president of CSL Seqirus, McNamee said in the company’s leadership transition announcement.
“Gordon played a key role in the acquisitions that established our global position in CSL Plasma, Behring and Seqirus,” the chair continued. “He helped design and build the Broadmeadows plasma facility and was then the site’s first Chief Engineer. He also ran global supply chain and IT.”
As for CSL’s outgoing CEO, McKenzie was tapped to lead the company just weeks after it scored a landmark approval for hemophilia B gene therapy Hemgenix in late 2022. Prior to his promotion, McKenzie had served as CSL’s chief operating officer.
Tasked with spearheading Hemgenix’s launch and integrating Vifor into the CSL fold, McKenzie in April of the following year told Fierce Pharma that the company relies on “internal successors” to its C-suite given the unique mix of businesses and product types CSL oversees.
Despite McKenzie’s rather abrupt retirement, the outgoing CEO’s “existing awards will be treated in accordance with the original terms upon his retirement,” CSL said in its press announcement.
For his part, Naylor is set to receive a fixed sum of roughly $2 million a year in the interim CEO post, plus a one-off equity grant of about $4 million that will be made in March, CSL said. Naylor won’t be in line to receive short- or long-term incentives due to the nature of his role, which has “no fixed term” as CSL’s board hunts for a permanent helmsman.