GSK Hires Burberry CFO Julie Brown | Photo credits: GlaxoSmithKline
Sept 26 (Reuters) – GSK said on Monday it has recruited Burberry chief financial officer Julie Brown, making the pharmaceuticals group one of the few major British companies to have an all-female management team.
She will succeed Iain Mackay, who will retire next year after serving as chief financial officer for nearly four years. His departure follows the split from GSK, which spun off its consumer healthcare arm Haleon to focus on prescription drugs and vaccines.
This is not the first time that Julie Brown has held a position in the pharmaceutical industry. She joined Burberry in 2017 after leaving medical products maker Smith & Nephew and was until September 26 a member of the board of Swiss drugmaker Roche. She also worked for AstraZeneca.
“(Iain Mackay) played a very important role in restructuring GSK and improving our operational and financial performance. (..) Julie (Brown) is a very experienced financial director who knows the biopharmaceutical sector very well”, Emma Walmsley, chief executive of GSK, said in a statement.
Julie Brown’s appointment was reported by Sky News on Saturday.
Burberry announced on Friday that Julie Brown would step down as chief financial officer and chief operating officer in April to take up a position outside the luxury industry. (Report Amna Karimi and Pushkala Aripaka in Bangalore; French version Valentine Baldassari, edited by Kate Entringer)