The chief executive of Takeda Pharmaceutical struck back against shareholders who are angry about his plan to appoint a foreigner as president, saying the move was necessary for global growth. \u00a0Two months ago, a group of more than 100 shareholders and former employees wrote to the board of Japan\u2019s biggest drug maker to protest the ascension of a non-Japanese, Christophe Weber, to the top position of Takeda as akin to \u201chijacking by foreign capital.\u201d In response, Takeda CEO Yasuchika Hasegawa made an impassioned 30-minute speech at the annual meeting in Osaka, defending his blueprint for overseas expansion.<\/p>\n
The founding family behind Asia’s largest pharmaceutical company is up in arms at the present board’s plans to appoint a non-Japanese person as its first foreign president.
\nA former executive of British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, 47-year-old Mr Weber is scheduled to be formally installed at a shareholders’ meeting.
\nBut in a boardroom row that has echoes of Michael Woodford’s unhappy – and brief – stint as president of Olympus Corp in 2011, the family that set up Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. has allied itself with former members of the board to oppose the confirmation of Mr Weber as president.<\/p>\n
110 members of the Takeda family and former executives have signed a letter of protest to the present board of the 230-year-old company in protest at the approval.
\nAccording to the Yomiuri newspaper, their opposition is based on the belief that Mr Weber could sanction the sale of the company to a foreign company and its technologies would be transferred overseas and lost.<\/p>\n
To what extent are companies national or international today? \u00a0Certainly in the US, foreign nationals run many big companies, presumably because they are the best people available for the CEO job.<\/p>\n
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