Acambis ousts CEO and finance director
Thursday, 8 March 2007
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The vaccine maker Acambis has replaced its chief executive and finance director after they failed to respond to shareholders' demands for a change in strategy.
The Cambridge-based company is also to axe 15 per cent of its workforce as part of restructuring and a drive to cut costs.
The announcement from the company comes just months after it lost out on a $1bn (£520m) smallpox contract with the US government.
Gordon Cameron, the chief executive, who has been with the firm for 10 years and has been instrumental in its bio-defence programme winning a number of contracts with the US, is to be replaced by Ian Garland, the former chief financial officer of Arrow Therapeutics. Acambis's chief finance officer David Lawrence will be replaced on an interim basis by Elizabeth Brown, the vice president of financial management.
Arrow Therapeutics was recently acquired by AstraZeneca for $150m and analysts say the appointment of Mr Garland has raised the possibility that Acambis could be put up for sale or seek a merger with another biotech company.
Shares in the company rose 6 per cent yesterday, up 7.5p to 127p, as investors welcomed the change. This gave the company a market capitalisation of £136m.
In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, Acambis won several multimillion dollar contracts to supply smallpox vaccines to the US, including a $428m contract to supply 155 million doses. Towards the end of 2004, shares were trading at 400p but they have slipped since, causing concern for investors who wanted the company to diversify away from bio-defence into vaccines for diseases such as Japanese encephalitis, bird flu and dengue fever.
Navid Malik, an analyst at Collins Stewart, said the appointments were good news for the company. "There hasn't been the level of delivery that shareholders expected," he said. "There is also a lot of competition for its key product and there needs to be a change of direction."
Acambis said it intended to reduce costs by 20 per cent over the next two years. Around 40 jobs will be axed.
The chairman Peter Fellner, who previously worked with Mr Garland at Celltech, said he was pleased to welcome someone of his "calibre and experience" to the team.
The market was shocked in November when Acambis lost out to Denmark's Bavarian Nordic to supply a weakened version of its smallpox vaccine to the US.
