Lonza poaches its new CEO from rival Siegfried

The Swiss drug contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) Lonza has named Siegfried Holding’s CEO Wolfgang Wienand as its new chief executive, effective this summer.

Wienand will replace Lonza’s interim CEO, Albert M. Baehny, who has been in the role since October. Wienand has been with Siegfried since 2010, where he held the roles of chief scientific officer and strategy officer before being promoted to CEO in 2019.

Before Siegfried, Wienand, who has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Cologne, held senior positions at the German chemical company Evonik Industries.

Lonza has had trouble keeping executives at the helm. In 2019, the company announced the sudden retirement of its then-CEO, Richard Ridinger. He was succeeded by a company executive, Marc Funk, who lasted just nine months as CEO.

In 2020, Lonza named Pierre-Alain Ruffieux CEO. He left the organization after serving for three years, after which Baehny, then the firm’s chairman, took over.

The CEO announcement comes soon after Lonza announced plans to acquire Roche’s biologics manufacturing facility in Vacaville, California, for $1.2 billion. The CDMO said it will invest another $550 million to upgrade the site in the next few years.

James Vane-Tempest, a stock analyst at the investment firm Jefferies, notes that the market had been expecting a new CEO to be announced. “We anticipate a favorable market reaction because the new CEO is an external appointment, and he brings a wealth of CDMO industry experience,” he says in a note to clients.

Sebastian Bray, a stock analyst at Berenberg Bank, says Wienand knows the contract manufacturing industry well. “Investors, in my view, generally have a positive opinion of his time at the helm of Siegfried,” Bray says in an email. “Relative to several peers, Siegfried largely avoided the share price extremes triggered by the ‘boom and bust’ cycle within parts of the contract manufacturing sector during and immediately after the COVID crisis.”