SANOFI AVENTIS: Chris Viehbacher Vini, Vidi...

The new chief executive of Sanofi-Aventis plans to expand further into consumer health, generics and biological medicines in his efforts to transform the French pharmaceuticals group.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Chris Viehbacher said that he would shift Sanofi-Aventis from "an EU/US-centric pharma company to a global healthcare company" through acquisitions and internal restructuring.

He said that he would respect the company's "very strong culture" and commitment to provide medicines to the poor, while removing bureaucracy and "making sure we are coming up with healthcare solutions".

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Ten weeks into the job, Sanofi-Aventis chief executive Chris Viehbacher has laid out his plans to push the firm forward and expressed his confidence in growing the French drugmaker into a diverse and strong global healthcare leader.

The future of the firm lies in “diversified platform growth”, Mr Viehbacher said, noting that “the blockbuster is not dead but you can’t bet the ranch” on them. Innovation in R&D is still at the core of Sanofi, he added, but it needs to be more efficient.

Mr Viehbacher’s key message was that Sanofi needs to simplify and speed-up its decision-making processes ina numbr of areas. In R&D, he is seeking more external alliances to go along with in-house projects and said that “innovation is not dead, there are 6,000 biotechs out there, as well as numerous government and academic schemes. We need to capture the best of that,” he added.

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