Bayer enlists Jürgen Eckhardt to leap into an additional role; Mirati tops list of multiple CFO exits

→ Jür­gen Eck­hardt’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at Bay­er will ex­pand on Sept. 1, as he be­comes the head of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment & li­cens­ing/open in­no­va­tion for the Ger­man con­glom­er­ate’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals di­vi­sion. Eck­hardt will be pulling dou­ble du­ty as he con­tin­ues to run Leaps by Bay­er, the ven­ture arm that has backed such biotechs as Affi­ni-T Ther­a­peu­tics, Bound­less Bio and Tim Lu’s Sen­ti Bio. Friede­mann Janus stepped up to the plate in an in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ty and had ex­pressed his in­ter­est in be­ing the per­ma­nent suc­ces­sor to Mar­i­anne De Backer, who’s in her first year as CEO of Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy. “One of the things that the man­age­ment board is re­al­ly fo­cused on is how do we rad­i­cal­ly ac­cel­er­ate every­thing at Bay­er,” new CEO Bill An­der­son said in his maid­en earn­ings call. “Our bench­mark isn’t oth­er large com­pa­nies — our bench­mark is a sole pro­pri­etor, a start­up.”

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