Vasant Narasimhan

Vasant "Vas" Narasimhan is an Indian-American physician and the chief executive officer of Novartis, Inc.( NOVN _He succeeded Joseph Jimenez who left Novartis in 2018. He worked in McKinsey & Co and Sandoz before joining Novartis.

Career :

Early career - 

Narasimhan joined McKinsey & Co, on leaving Harvard and was recruited by Novartis in 2005. In his early career, he worked extensively in Africa, Peru, and India on projects focused on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

He served as the Global Head of Development, Novartis Vaccines in the US between 2012 and 2014 before moving to Sandoz as Global Head of Biopharmaceuticals and Oncology Injectables.

From 2014 to 2016, he served as the Global Head of Development for Novartis Pharmaceuticals. From 2016 to 2018, he held the role of Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer within the company.

Novartis Chief Executive (2017 – present) :

On September 5, 2017, Narasimhan was named CEO of Novartis, succeeding Joseph Jimenez .

He publicly stated his desire to focus Novartis from a diversified company to a pure-play medicines company. He also advocated for development of key technologies and capabilities in advanced therapy platforms, such as cell therapy and gene therapy, RNA therapeutics, and radioligand therapy.

As part of his strategy, Narasimhan has divested the joint consumer healthcare venture to GSK, the spin-off of Alcon, and the exit of a stake in Roche as well as pushed for the acquisition of Advanced Accelerator Applications, Endocyte, AveXis, and The Medicines Company.

In February 2018, three months after becoming CEO, Narasimhan apologized to Novartis employees after it was revealed that Novartis had signed a $1.2 million yearlong contract with President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen's consulting firm in February 2017.

In 2019, in response to an FDA investigation about manipulated data involving Zolgensma, Narasimhan defended the company's decision to delay informing the FDA and also announced the company was forcing out scientists who were involved in the manipulated data.

As part of a "more comprehensive commitment to ethics”, Narasimhan has moved to settle long standing bribery and anti-trust cases facing Novartis in the US, China, Vietnam and Greece.