Stada Names Sandoz Manager as Fifth Chief Executive Since 2016

(Bloomberg) -- Stada Arzneimittel AG will get its fifth chief executive officer in a little over two years as the German maker of copycat pills taps a Novartis AG manager to take over from Claudio Albrecht, who was brought in four months ago by the drugmaker’s new owners.

Peter Goldschmidt, who heads the North American operations of Novartis’s generics unit Sandoz, will take the helm at the Bad Vilbel, Germany-based company on Sept. 1, Stada said in a statement Thursday. Albrecht will move to a nonexecutive position, as planned when he was appointed last year, Stada said.

Stada, one of Europe’s largest makers of copycat pills, was bought by private equity firms Bain Capital and Cinven last year for about 5.4 billion euros ($6.4 billion). Goldschmidt, a German national, also worked for Novartis in Europe and Asia, the company said.

“Claudio Albrecht is making tremendous progress at Stada and will continue implementing the necessary reforms as CEO until later in the year,” Guenter von Au, chairman of the supervisory board, said in a statement. “It has always been clear that he will then stay with Stada in a nonexecutive role, and we are delighted to have recruited an outstanding successor.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Marthe Fourcade in Paris at mfourcade@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III, Phil Serafino

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