Sanofi has replaced its CEO Paul Hudson after a series of R&D setbacks at the French pharma, handing the reins to Merck KGaA leader Belén Garijo, M.D., Ph.D.
Following the departure of GSK CEO Emma Walmsley at the start of this year, Garijo’s appointment returns a woman CEO to the ranks of the world's top 10 Big Pharmas. Garijo, who has been CEO of Germany-based Merck KGaA since May 2021, is set to fill the vacancy created by Hudson’s departure April 29. Olivier Charmeil, executive vice president, general medicines at Sanofi, will serve as interim CEO during the transition as Hudson's final day comes Feb. 17.
Garijo will bring “increased rigor” to implementing the company’s strategy, Sanofi explained in an early-morning press release. Garijo’s priority will be to strengthen the productivity, governance and innovation capacity for R&D, the Paris-based pharma added.
This priority spans the major areas in which Sanofi has struggled during Hudson’s six-year tenure as CEO. Hudson himself acknowledged Sanofi has “had some challenges” on an earnings call with journalists late last month, adding that he was “well aware of the headlines.”
On the same call, the outgoing CEO sought to frame the setbacks as a result of trying to “do things that had never been done before” instead of following the pack.
“I realized quite quickly after joining this company that if we're going to do things, we should try and do them better than anybody else, ” Hudson said on the call. “With that, comes a bit of a bumpy ride, and that's okay.”
Last year, that bumpy ride included the anti-OX40L-ligand antibody amlitelimab flunking a phase 2 asthma trial, the oral TNF inhibitor balinatunfib missing the goal of a midstage psoriasis study and the Regeneron-partnered IL-33 candidate itepekimab failing one of a pair of phase 3 studies in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Every setback increased the pressure on Sanofi to find a replacement for the revenue lost when Dupixent comes off patent around 2031.
Sanofi's board of directors appears to have reached a different conclusion about the acceptability of the company's setbacks to Hudson, and the pharma has looked to its own past for a leader who can correct course.
Garijo joined French pharmaceutical company Rhône-Poulenc Rorer in 1996, moved to Aventis after the companies merged and ended up at Sanofi as the result of another takeover. Sanofi said Garijo led the integration of Genzyme before leaving to join Merck KGaA in 2011. Garijo was born in 1960, and Sanofi will need to change its articles of association to raise its CEO age limit upon appointment before she takes the post.
Freeing up Garijo to take the top Sanofi post is the separate leadership transition taking place at Merck KGaA. In September, the German healthcare and electronics conglomerate announced that Garijo would conclude her five-year tenure as chief executive at the end of April, as planned. Kai Beckmann, who is currently the company's CEO of electronics, will take over as Merck KGaA's new group CEO May 1.
After leading the company's pharmaceutical department, Garijo became CEO at Merck KGaA back in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The promotion earned Garijo the distinction of being the first woman to lead one of the 30 biggest companies on the Frankfurt, Germany, stock exchange, plus, she was the first female CEO in the firm's more than 350 years in business.
One defining feature of Garijo's tenure has come in the form of Merck KGaA's deepening presence in China, where the company is now adopting a China-for-China supply chain strategy to serve the local market as geopolitical tensions continue to threaten international trade.
While the board attempts to right the ship over at Sanofi, the initial reaction to the CEO change has been "very negative," analysts at Jefferies wrote in a note to clients. The French pharma's stock was trading down nearly 5% in premarket trading Thursday.
The "conventional narrative" that may be forming around the regime change, as Jefferies sees it, is that "the appointment of a CEO without a credible R&D track record at her prior position and an inability to drive growth into the Merck KGaA Pharma business reflects corporate governance failure."
Still, the analysts see the matter from a slightly different perspective, noting first and foremost that driving R&D productivity at a midsized drugmaker like Merck is "exponentially harder than it is for large cap pharma," describing R&D success as a "function of scale."
"The focus at Merck KGaA for scale was not Pharma but the LifeScience business," the analyst note continued. "We can debate if that in and of itself was sensible but given the KGaA structure, pinning this entirely on the CEO would seem a bit short sighted."
Meanwhile, revamping R&D takes time, the Jefferies team said, pointing to AstraZeneca's four years of "intense turn-around" under Pascal Soriot starting in 2012 as something of an anomaly in the industry.
"Because as it stands Dupixent will go off patent in 2032, there isn't really time to do an R&D turn-around and hope for the best," according to the analysts, who added that the CEO change coming so late into Dupixent's lifespan "could be pinned on the board."
Rather than revamping its research and development engine first, the biggest factor Sanofi must meet in the present is the "longevity" of its Dupixent joint venture with Regeneron, the Jefferies team said, suggesting "if that is understood by the board, then the appointment does not reflect failure."
Sanofi was the 10th largest pharma company by sales in 2024, while Merck KGaA was 18th on the list. None of the companies above Sanofi on the list are led by a woman, although Teresa Graham heads up the pharma unit at Roche.
GSK was the largest pharma company with a female CEO before Walmsley left at the start of 2026. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which was outside the top 20, is led by Reshma Kewalramani, M.D.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional detail on Belén Garijo's background and commentary from an analyst note.