Paul Hudson

Paul Hudson
Born	1967-10-14October 14, 1967 (age 59)
Nationality	British
Education	Manchester Metropolitan University (BA, economics); Chartered Institute of Marketing (diploma)
Occupation	Pharmaceutical executive
Company	Sanofi
Title	Former Chief Executive Officer
Children	3

Paul Hudson (born 14 October 1967) is a British businessman who served as chief executive officer of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi from September 2019 until February 2026. During his tenure he steered the company through the COVID-19 pandemic, divested its consumer healthcare division, and pursued a strategy of concentrating research spending on immunology and specialty medicines rather than the diabetes and cardiovascular franchises he had inherited.

Before joining Sanofi, Hudson was chief executive of Novartis Pharmaceuticals from 2016 to 2019, having risen through two decades of senior commercial roles at AstraZeneca, including president of AstraZeneca United States and executive vice president for North America. He began his career in sales and marketing roles at GlaxoSmithKline UK and Sanofi-Synthélabo UK.

His mandate as chief executive was not renewed after a string of late-stage clinical trial setbacks, and he was succeeded by Belén Garijo, the former chief executive of Merck KGaA, at the annual general meeting on 29 April 2026. His last day in office was 17 February 2026.

Hudson holds a degree in economics from Manchester Metropolitan University, which awarded him an honorary Doctor of Business Administration in 2018, and a diploma in marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He has three children and has described himself as an ardent supporter of Manchester United.

Early life and education

Few details of Hudson's early life and family background have been made public. He was born on 14 October 1967 in the United Kingdom. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Manchester Metropolitan University, and separately holds a diploma in marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the United Kingdom. In 2018 his alma mater awarded him an honorary Doctor of Business Administration "for his achievements in the pharmaceutical industry".

Career

Early career: GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Synthélabo

Hudson began his career in sales and marketing positions at GlaxoSmithKline UK, and subsequently moved to Sanofi-Synthélabo UK in a similar capacity, before joining AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca

Hudson spent close to two decades at AstraZeneca, rising through "several increasingly senior positions" in the company's commercial organisation. According to Novartis, which later recruited him, Hudson led AstraZeneca's business in Japan before taking on a North American role. By January 2013, AstraZeneca named him to its newly expanded senior executive team as executive vice president, North America, reporting to chief executive Pascal Soriot alongside colleagues including chief financial officer Simon Lowth and research head Mene Pangalos. He went on to become president of AstraZeneca United States, the final role he held at the company before his departure for Novartis.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals (2016 to 2019)

On 17 May 2016, Novartis announced that it was splitting its pharmaceuticals division into two business units, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Oncology, and that Hudson, then "Executive Vice President, North America and member of the Executive Committee" at AstraZeneca, would become chief executive of the new Novartis Pharmaceuticals unit effective 1 July 2016. He reported directly to Novartis group chief executive Joseph Jimenez and joined the Executive Committee of Novartis, succeeding David Epstein, who left the company. Novartis Pharmaceuticals encompassed the group's neuroscience, ophthalmology, immunology and dermatology, respiratory, cardio-metabolic and established medicines franchises, and Hudson was based at the Innovative Medicines Division's headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. He remained in the role until 2019, when he departed to become chief executive of Sanofi.

Sanofi: Chief Executive Officer (2019 to 2026)

Appointment

Hudson joined as chief executive officer on 1 September 2019, succeeding Olivier Brandicourt. In an interview given less than a year into the job, Hudson said his early priority was "making sure our strategy was clear internally and externally" and reconnecting the organisation with "our commitment to transformational science that could change lives". The strategy he set out was first presented in December 2019, and its next chapter, referred to internally as the "Play to Win" strategy, was presented in October 2023.

COVID-19 pandemic response

In his second year in the role, Hudson oversaw Sanofi's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the development of two in-house COVID-19 vaccine candidates and partnerships with other manufacturers. Speaking to Fortune in October 2020, Hudson said of the pandemic effort: "I'm privileged to be leading an organization… working seven days a week to try and bring something to help the entire planet," and said he believed cross-industry "collaborative spirit will stay" after the pandemic. Sanofi's own vaccine candidate, developed with the Pasteur Institute, fell behind schedule; in January 2021 Hudson told the French newspaper Le Figaro, as reported by The Guardian, that "as we're a few months behind on our main vaccine we asked ourselves how we could be useful now", and announced that Sanofi would instead manufacture 100 million doses of the competing Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at its Frankfurt factory from July 2021. The delay to the Pasteur Institute-partnered vaccine programme, and its eventual abandonment, drew public criticism in France from politicians across the political spectrum, who described it as a symbol of decline in French scientific research.

Portfolio transformation

Over his six years as chief executive, Hudson pursued a strategy of narrowing Sanofi's focus to immunology, specialty care and vaccines, winding down internal diabetes and cardiovascular research programmes that had historically been central to the company. He also oversaw the divestment of Sanofi's consumer healthcare business, Opella, which had included well-known over-the-counter brands. Under his leadership, Dupixent, an immunology drug co-marketed with Regeneron, grew into one of the world's best-selling pharmaceutical products, which Sanofi's 2025 results described as the key driver of net sales growth that year. Hudson also pursued a comparatively research-intensive strategy, arguing that heavy investment in Sanofi's pipeline, rather than following competitors, was necessary to replace revenue that Dupixent will lose when its patent protection lapses in the early 2030s; he acknowledged this approach "sometimes worried investors".

Departure

Sanofi's board of directors met on 11 February 2026 and decided not to renew Hudson's mandate as a director of the company; the board announced the following day that Hudson's last day as chief executive would be 17 February 2026, and that Belén Garijo, until then chief executive of Merck KGaA, would succeed him once she took office at the close of Sanofi's annual general meeting on 29 April 2026. Olivier Charmeil, an executive vice president and member of Sanofi's Executive Committee since 2011, served as interim chief executive in the intervening period. Hudson formally resigned as a Sanofi director on 18 February 2026. Sanofi board chairman Frédéric Oudéa thanked Hudson "for his work and the strategic initiatives he has launched during his tenure" while saying the board wished to place the company "in experienced hands" under Garijo. According to Sanofi's 2025 annual report, the Appointments, Governance and CSR Committee had discussed the possible renewal of Hudson's term with him on 28 January 2026, before recommending Garijo to the board on 10 February 2026.

Leadership and management style

Hudson described Sanofi, a company built up through more than 300 acquisitions over three decades, as an organisation that had "not spent enough time on the central maturity in terms of navigating strategy" when he arrived, and said his leadership team began by defining strategy, then the organisational structure needed to deliver it, and only then the people and culture to run it. During the COVID-19 pandemic he said he tried to simplify decision-making, recalling that "what may have been a meeting room with 15 people became a Zoom call with three or four people who are absolutely essential decision makers, who accept full accountability". He said he saw his own role in the vaccine effort as being "to get all the obstacles out of the way, even to get myself out of the way", so that scientific staff could move as quickly as possible.

On the series of late-stage clinical trial failures that marked his final year in charge, Hudson told journalists on an earnings call in January 2026 that Sanofi had "had some challenges" and that he was "well aware of the headlines", but defended his approach: "I realized quite quickly after joining this company that if we're going to do things, we should try and do them better than anybody else. With that, comes a bit of a bumpy ride, and that's okay." Commentators characterised Garijo's mandate, by contrast, as bringing "increased rigor" and stronger "productivity, governance and innovation capacity" to Sanofi's research and development organisation, implicitly framing Hudson's tenure as comparatively loosely governed in this area.

Major deals and strategic decisions

As chief executive, Hudson directed a lengthy series of acquisitions and divestments intended to reshape the business around immunology, rare disease and vaccines, moving away from the primary care and diabetes franchises he inherited.

In December 2019, three months into the job, Hudson completed his first corporate acquisition, buying the cancer drug maker Synthorx. The following August he struck a larger deal, agreeing to pay approximately $3.7 billion for Principia Biopharma to accelerate a pipeline of multiple sclerosis treatments; he told STAT News he favoured "bolt-on" acquisitions in the $2 billion to $5 billion range because "I would rather not be paying royalties over the long-term". That rationale proved only partly successful: BioPharma Dive later reported that the multiple sclerosis drug arising from the Principia deal produced "mixed results" and was rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration shortly before Hudson's own departure. Around the same period, Hudson also divested the company's remaining stake in Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, worth more than $11 billion, which he said would help fund further acquisitions.

Hudson's dealmaking continued through the mid-2020s. He completed the acquisition of Translate Bio, a messenger RNA vaccine technology company, in 2021. On 13 March 2023 he agreed to buy Provention Bio for $25.00 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $2.8 billion; the acquisition, completed on 27 April 2023, added Tzield (teplizumab), a therapy for type 1 diabetes. He completed the purchase of the clinical-stage biotechnology company Inhibrx on 30 May 2024, under terms that saw Inhibrx stockholders paid $30 per share in cash, approximately $1.7 billion in total, plus a contingent value right potentially worth a further $5 per share, approximately $0.3 billion if milestones are met. On 29 November 2024, he agreed to sell the company's global rights to the drug Enjaymo to Recordati.

Hudson's largest single strategic move was the sale of the consumer healthcare division, Opella. He opened exclusive negotiations with the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier and Rice on 21 October 2024, and closed the transaction on 30 April 2025, selling an approximately 50 per cent controlling stake; the divestment produced a net gain of 2.6 billion euros and total net cash proceeds of 10.4 billion euros. In his final year as chief executive, Hudson kept acquiring: he completed the purchase of DR-0201, a bispecific antibody developed by Dren Bio, on 27 May 2025, for an upfront payment of 539 million euros with potential milestones of up to 1.2 billion euros; completed the acquisition of Blueprint Medicines Corporation on 18 July 2025, paying $129.00 per share in cash, an equity value of approximately $9.1 billion on a fully diluted basis and up to approximately $9.5 billion including contingent value rights, which added the medicine Ayvakit/Ayvakyt (avapritinib) and a pipeline in systemic mastocytosis; and, four days later, announced a definitive agreement to acquire the London-based respiratory vaccine developer Vicebio for an upfront payment of $1.15 billion plus potential milestones of up to $450 million.

Financial and market performance

In the final full financial year of Hudson's tenure, the company he led reported consolidated net sales of 43,626 million euros for 2025, up 6.2 per cent on a reported basis from 41,081 million euros in 2024, and up 9.9 per cent at constant exchange rates, a rise attributed mainly to strong performances from Dupixent and ALTUVIIIO. Dupixent alone generated net sales of 15,714 million euros in 2025, an increase of 20.2 per cent on a reported basis. Net income attributable to shareholders rose to 7,813 million euros in 2025 from 5,560 million euros in 2024, while operating income fell to 6,344 million euros from 7,252 million euros over the same period, reflecting higher impairment charges. Diluted earnings per share were 6.37 euros in 2025, compared with 4.43 euros in 2024. On 17 February 2026, the date Hudson's office as chief executive ended, the shares he had led closed at 78.13 euros on Euronext Paris, the price used to value the performance shares due to be delivered to him. Fierce Pharma reported that the company ranked tenth-largest in the world pharmaceutical industry by sales in 2024. A benchmarking study cited in the 2025 annual report placed the company tenth among a panel of twelve global pharmaceutical peers by market capitalisation and eighth by net sales.

Hudson's compensation as chief executive was disclosed in regulatory filings. For 2025, his gross annual fixed compensation was 1,600,000 euros, and the board set his annual variable compensation for that year at 2,616,000 euros gross, equivalent to 163.53 per cent of his fixed pay, based on a global performance attainment rate of 109 per cent. Following the end of his mandate, the board confirmed that performance shares awarded to Hudson in May 2023 had definitively vested; after proration, 75,206 shares were due to be delivered to him on 25 May 2026, valued at approximately 5,875,844.78 euros based on the share price on 17 February 2026. He was also awarded a gross termination benefit of 5,207,750 euros and a non-compete indemnity of 3,124,650 euros, covering a nine-month non-compete period, paid in nine monthly instalments; he was additionally entitled to retain the use of a car with driver for two months after his departure, until 17 April 2026. An annual report disclosure noted that, in an analysis of actual total compensation among a panel of twelve global pharmaceutical companies for 2022 to 2024, Hudson ranked second lowest, placing him in the lowest quartile of the sample.

Controversies

Hudson's tenure coincided with continuing United States and Canadian litigation over Zantac (ranitidine), a heartburn medication that had been voluntarily recalled in October 2019, shortly before he took office, after regulators investigated whether it could generate a potentially carcinogenic chemical. Multiple personal injury lawsuits and class actions followed; a federal multidistrict litigation was consolidated in the Southern District of Florida in February 2020, and although a court excluded plaintiffs' expert evidence in December 2022, leading to dismissal of many federal claims, thousands of cases, including a large number in Delaware state court, remained unresolved as of the end of 2025, with around 18,765 individual plaintiffs outstanding and an appeal pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Settlement agreements covering a majority of the Delaware state court litigation were reached in April 2025, and, separately, an agreement in principle to resolve the majority of Zantac personal injury cases pending in other US state courts was reached in March 2024, both while Hudson remained chief executive.

He also led the company throughout long-running litigation in France over Depakine (sodium valproate), an epilepsy medication alleged to have caused birth defects and developmental disorders in children exposed in utero. As of 31 December 2025, 82 families had brought civil claims covering 136 affected individuals, and a class action brought by the patients' association APESAC was still proceeding through the French courts, with several first-instance rulings, including findings of liability in some cases and provisional damages awards of between 0.1 million and 0.5 million euros, under appeal.

The COVID-19 vaccine programme Hudson oversaw with the Pasteur Institute slipped behind schedule and was ultimately abandoned, a delay that drew criticism from French politicians across the political spectrum, who described it as symptomatic of a broader decline in French scientific research.

In the year before his departure, the experimental pipeline Hudson had built suffered a series of high-profile late-stage trial failures: the antibody amlitelimab failed a phase 2 asthma trial, the oral drug balinatunfib missed its goal in a mid-stage psoriasis study, and itepekimab, developed with Regeneron, failed one of two phase 3 trials in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These setbacks, combined with the FDA's rejection of the multiple sclerosis treatment that had originated in Hudson's Principia Biopharma acquisition, contributed to the board's decision in February 2026 not to renew his mandate as chief executive.

Personal life

Hudson has three children. He has described himself as "a hands-on dad and an ardent Manchester United football fan".

Recognition

• 2018: Honorary Doctor of Business Administration, Manchester Metropolitan University, "for his achievements in the pharmaceutical industry".

See also

• Sanofi
• Belén Garijo
• Olivier Brandicourt
• Novartis
• AstraZeneca

External links

• <ref>"Paul Hudson".Manchester Metropolitan University.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>