Lonza Group has named a veteran Roche exec as its new chief executive, as the Swiss contract manufacturer seeks to end a year of CEO turnover.
Pierre-Alain Ruffieux, currently head of global pharma technical operations at Roche, will join Lonza on Nov. 1. Prior to Roche, Ruffieux spent 12 years at Novartis.
The news comes as Lonza prepares to build manufacturing facilities to make ingredients for Moderna's trial COVID-19 vaccine — one of the five vaccines recently identified by the Trump administration as having the most promise.
Ruffieux will take over for Albert Baehny, who has been interim CEO at Lonza since January. The two previous chief executives, Richard Ridinger and Marc Funk, quit Lonza last year within eight months of each other.
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