HE Board of Directors Grifols announced this Tuesday Steven F. Mayer’s resignation appointment as chief executive and Thomas Glanzman for the position and chairmanship of the board of directors. Mayer, who was appointed on September 30, 2022, decided to resign. for health reasons And other personal reasonswill prevent the company from implementing the compliance plan announced, and layoffs of 2,300 workers worldwide.
According to the company itself, Mayer’s appointment aims to “accelerate the implementation of the company’s strategic plan,” aimed at reducing debt levels and optimizing cash generation. The compliance plan was met with uneasiness and euphoria and joy by the staff.
In recent months, the company has launched a comprehensive operational improvement plan to increase efficiency, improve financial structure and prepare the company for long-term growth. The plan and related measures required the full commitment of the president, and Glanzmann adhered to it.
This chair dance at the head of the company comes at a time of drastic changes, mandated by the need to optimize the group’s accounts and future expansion plans. Difficulties in supplying plasma, which is the raw material of the company’s development, necessitate diversification of income sources and increasing margins. With the plan, the group planned to save around 400 million euros per year, mainly through accounting adjustment of inventories and staff reduction, which will affect hundreds of layoffs in Spain. The loss of plasma donors lies against the backdrop of difficulties with an impact on book inventory or plasma reserves to maintain the production rate of the finished product. To reduce cost, donation centers in the US (which pay donors) are planned to be closed. As of June, Grifols had 400 such facilities, primarily concentrated in the USA and Germany. In the last quarter of 2022, the firm has already liquidated 18 of these centers and expects more shutdowns this year.
Swiss-born Glanzmann has been director of Grifols since 2006 and vice-chairman of the company since January 2017, and has spent nearly his entire professional career connected to the plasma industry. He is president of Baxter Bioscience, CEO of Immuno International, and president of the European Biotechnology Group, among other related positions.
Raimon Grífols Roura has been appointed vice chairman of the board of Grifols, succeeding Thomas Glanzmann, and this responsibility will be combined with his current duties as partner and several CEOs. The board also approved the appointment of James Costos as member and chairman of the sustainability committee, replacing Thomas Glanzmann, and the dismissal of Costos as member and chairman of the appointments and remuneration committee. In addition, Carina Szpilka will take on these responsibilities, which she will combine with her current responsibilities as an independent chief executive and audit committee member.
Glanzmann was a former CEO at the World Economic Forum and was the Health Advisor for Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based venture capital firm, for 10 years. Glanzmann is currently the director of Alcon and co-founder of a San Francisco-based MedTech fund. He holds a Political Science degree from Dartmouth College (United States) and an MBA from IMD (Lausanne – Switzerland). He also holds a Board Certification from the UCLA Anderson School of Management (United States).