The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has selected a comms man, Stephen Whitehead, to be its next chief executive. Whitehead has spent the past few years working in corporate affairs at a U.K. financial services group. He was group communications director at Prudential PLC, between 2007 and 2010; before that he was group corporate affairs director at the U.K. bank, Barclays PLC. But Whitehead also has pharmaceutical industry experience - he spent 10 years at Glaxo PLC and Eli Lilly & Co. in corporate affairs, becoming European director of corporate affairs at Lilly before leaving the sector in 2003.
As the Pink Sheet reports, “The association's choice of a leader with public communications and lobbying experience is timely. Whitehead comes on board at a time of policy transition - perhaps more accurately, turmoil - for U.K. pharmaceutical companies. They are facing the replacement of a 50-year-old method of controlling their pricing and profits, the Pharmaceutical Pricing Regulation Scheme (PPRS), with a so far vaguely defined value-based pricing scheme.”
We are also pleased to report that our friend and colleague Richard Bergstrom has begun his new job as director general of the European Federation of the Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations EFPIA. (Richard was formerly director general of LIF, the trade association for the Swedish pharmaceutical industry.)
