Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky steps aside and hands over the reins to the world’s largest healthcare company to a longtime lieutenant after nearly a decade at the helm.
Gorsky, 61, will become J&J’s chief executive from Jan. 3. Joaquin Duato, who had run J & J’s pharmaceutical business before becoming Gorsky’s deputy, will become CEO and join the company’s board of directors.
Gorsky has led the company to huge growth, making the J&J range take advantage of technological advances and exploring manufacturing issues that had affected its consumer health business, as well as thorny demands for opioids and talc. It leaves J&J still battling a pandemic that disrupted its factories, offices and labs as the company pursued a vaccine against Covid-19.
His family’s health problems partly caused Mr Gorsky to continue the change, he said in an interview Thursday.
“Despite the huge challenges we had to face with Covid-19, I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of health and the important role J&J will play in the future,” Gorsky said.