BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Taking Takeda global

How Takeda CEO Weber plans to claim top-tier positions in GI, cancer, CNS

May 30, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

Two years after joining Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Christophe Weber has narrowed the company's therapeutic focus, expanded the executive team and reorganized its approach to market with the aim of transforming the company into a global pharma. If successful, Weber expects that Takeda could claim a position among the top-tier pharmas in at least two of its three therapeutic areas in the next five to 10 years.

When Weber joined as Takeda's first non-Japanese COO in April 2014, the company was an amalgam of small, mid-sized and large acquisitions completed over the prior decade. While the deals have given Takeda a commercial and R&D infrastructure that spanned the globe, the regions continued to operate independently...