Illumina names former Agilent exec as CEO, months after parting ways with deSouza

Il­lu­mi­na has picked Ja­cob Thay­sen as its new CEO, rough­ly three months af­ter the com­pa­ny part­ed ways with Fran­cis deS­ouza fol­low­ing a fight with an ac­tivist in­vestor and amid strug­gling for­tunes as it wres­tles with an­titrust au­thor­i­ties.

The ap­point­ment of Thay­sen, most re­cent­ly the pres­i­dent of Ag­i­lent Tech­nolo­gies’ life sci­ences and ap­plied mar­kets group, sig­nals an at­tempt by the ge­net­ic test­ing com­pa­ny to put a leader with deep roots in the ad­vanced di­ag­nos­tics busi­ness at the helm. Il­lu­mi­na’s an­nounce­ment al­so ex­ten­sive­ly high­light­ed Thay­sen’s track record of fi­nan­cial re­sults at Ag­i­lent, in par­tic­u­lar not­ing how he “drove the di­vi­sion’s rev­enue and sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved its op­er­at­ing prof­it.”

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