Jim Armitage: GSK still on sticky wicket so it must get drugs calls right
So, Abbas Hussain, elder brother of Nasser, trudges off the field to the Glaxo clubhouse.
The boss of GSK’s troubled pharmaceuticals unit (no bad cricketer himself) was always likely to leave after Emma Walmsley, his rival running the Horlicks-to-Panadol consumer team, beat him to the captain’s job.
I suspect not all investors will mourn his parting.
Outgoing chief executive Sir Andrew Witty’s asset- swap deal with Novartis may have addressed issues around consumer products, but pharma has been seen as the weaker performer of Glaxo’s two sides.
The company is about to go into a period of getting key test results back from many of its pipeline of trial drugs. More than ever, it will be making tough decisions on which compounds to back and which to sack.
Hussain’s replacement, Luke Miels, is as qualified as any to root out the winners from the losers. His career in science and commercial work marks him out from Hussain, who’s always been on the commercial side.
As such, he’s a decent hire, and a loss to AstraZeneca, which has seen a number of big-hitters leave lately.
It’s not so long ago that noisy shareholders were agitating for GSK to be broken up. So Miels has to deliver a big innings, and soon. Walmsley’s captaincy depends on it.
