Chiron's missing link
Stepping aside almost five years to the day after joining Chiron Corp. as president and CEO, Sean Lance is likely to be remembered as a transitional CEO who streamlined the company's business units and pared down its pipeline, giving the company a more business-oriented focus and rewarding investors with solid if unexciting earnings growth. Now it will be left to his successor, Howard Pien, to rejuvenate the company's pipeline, which remains among the more lackluster of the top tier biotechs.
The change of hands at the top was announced last week. Pien, who has been president of the international pharmaceuticals division at GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE:GSK; GSK, London, U.K.), will take up his post no later than the end of April, while Lance will continue as chairman...