Some longer form thoughts on the somewhat surprising Sanofi CEO change as a former Big Biopharma Corporate Strategy guy:

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Sanofi CEO success hinges on deep alignment with a Board of Directors that appears far more "hands-on" than its peers. Some Boards favor a "let them cook" approach with new leadership; Sanofi’s clearly isn’t one of them.

There is a palpable cultural disconnect between the BoD and past non-French CEOs (Viehbacher and Hudson). While Hudson’s tenure saw flat growth, he did scale DUPIXENT into a monster and unlocked capital via the Opella spinout to fuel R&D.

Sanofi was reportedly "in" on several major deals but ultimately got outbid on Horizon, Seagen, Prometheus, and Televant (plus Medivation under the previous CEO). Commercial-side execs are rarely price-conscious in M&A, so the hesitation likely came from a Board unwilling to "open the purse" and push hard enough.

Turning a ship this size takes time. But if Sanofi is benchmarking against AstraZeneca—which Pascal Soriot famously turned around in 6 years—it’s easy to see why they moved on following flat performance and pipeline misses.

The incoming CEO must still invest heavily in BD&L, but the challenge will be doing so without triggering the massive bidding wars that this Board historically shies away from.