Teva Pharmaceutical, the world’s largest producer of generic drugs, has found a new boss after a long search. The experienced pharmaceutical manager Kare Schultz will bring the company headquartered in Israel back on track. Teva did not mention an exact entry date on Monday in Jerusalem.
Investors responded very positively to the hiring: The shares of Teva on Monday rose about 20 percent, the biggest intraday rally since 1984.
Teva, the parent company of the German generics producer Ratiopharm, stood for several months without a permanent boss. The previous CEO Erez Vigodman had left the company in February. Since then, Teva has been led by Interim cheif Yitzhak Peterburg, who will continue to lead the business until the arrival of Schultz.
The 56-year-old Schultz has been the head of the Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck since 2015. Prior to this, he was in Novo Nordisk. Schultz faces a difficult task: Teva reported a net loss of 6 billion dollars in the second quarter due in part to depreciation on goodwill in the US. The company therefore lowered its profit forecast for the current year and cut the dividend.
Elsewhere, Amazon’s acquisition of food chain Whole Foods, coupled with sharp price cuts on food, has given the chain more than just publicity: The number of customer visits at Whole Foods has increased by 25 percent. The company Foursquare Labs has compiled data from the first two days after Amazone’s takeover of the food chain. These data have then been compared with the corresponding days a year earlier.
Amazon, with CEO Jeff Bezos, bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion last month, and already on the day the deal went through, the e-commerce giant lowered the prices of Whole Foods by as much as 43 percent on a range of products. In several regions, the increase in customer engagement was remarkable: in Chicago, 35 percent more customers visited Whole Foods stores, according to Foursquare.
Despite the great interest, Amazon and Whole Foods have a great deal left for the real food giants: the chain controls less than 2 percent of the industry, dominated by Wal-Mart, Kroger and Albertsons.
