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GSK confirms former Tesco boss Sir Dave Lewis will head up £40bn spin-off

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Pharmaceutical giant GSK has received a special recognition from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its bepirovirsen drug.
Pharmaceutical giant GSK has received a special recognition from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its bepirovirsen drug.

 GlaxoSmithKline confirmed that former Tesco chief exec Sir Dave Lewis would become non-executive chair designate of a new Consumer Healthcare company to be created from a proposed demerger from GSK in 2022.

It said Lewis’ appointment would take effect from Jan. 1.

GSK set out a plan in June, subject to shareholder approval, to separate its Consumer Healthcare business by way of a demerger in mid-2022 of at least 80 per cent of its holding to shareholders. The division generates annual sales of more than £10bn

GSK’s consumer healthcare business is one of the largest in the world, and it comes as part of a joint venture with Pfizer, with GSK owning a 68 per cent stake and it will be Lewis’ responsibility to build the board for the new company and making it a separately traded company.

GSK announced that it had poached a Pfizer vaccine executive after failing to bring its own Covid jab to market during the pandemic.

The break-up of GSK will allow the company to focus on pharmaceutical products and vaccines.

The pharmaceuticals giant announced that Phil Dormitzer will be joining the company as global head of vaccines and R&D effective.

Dormitzer joins from Pfizer where he was vice president and chief scientific officer and headed up the team which produced Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, one of the most widely used vaccines in Britain.

Tesco was on its knees shortly after Lewis joined in 2014 when an accounting scandal knocked millions of pounds off its profits and billions off its share price.

He left in October 2020, having declared Tesco’s turnaround complete, with its position once again reinforced as the clear market leader among Britain’s supermarkets. He was ennobled earlier this year.

Lewis joined Tesco from consumer goods group Unilever where he was nicknamed “Drastic Dave” after fixing businesses through cost cutting and innovative marketing.

Since October, Lewis has been the UK government’s supply chain adviser, tasked with fixing supply issues which have hit the British economy.

In July, GSK appointed Brian McNamara as chief exec2 designate of the new Consumer Healthcare company.