Glaxo Takes Its Medicine

Andrew Witty inherited a drugmaker sick with scandal and spent the next eight years patching up his patient.GlaxoSmithKline may finally be well again.

- Matthew Herper

Here’s how Sir Andrew Witty, who is due to end an eight-year tenure as the chief executive of British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, would like to be remembered: In his shirtsleeves, in sub-Saharan Africa, meeting with impoverished villagers and then persuading first-world politicians of the need for drugs in the developing world. As the chief executive whose company developed a malaria vaccine and was first to test a vaccine for the Ebola virus. As the ethical exec who stopped paying doctors what were essentially bribes to talk up drugs. As the pharma boss who managed to stabilise a drug giant without a big, destructive merger.

“Honestly, I don’t regret a single decision,” says Witty, 52. “Someone smarter than me probably could have done it better. But I think it was the right direction for us to go in.”

History might remember a different Glaxo: The company whose revenues are flat since Witty took over and whose shares have under performed its peers. The company accused of bribery in half-a-dozen countries. The firm that, in July 2012, pleaded guilty to civil and criminal charges in the US for marketing in illegal ways drugs like Paxil for depression and Avandia for diabetes, and agreed to pay $3 billion in fines, the largest such settlement ever. After that bruising Witty did something pharma chief executives almost never do. He apologised. “On behalf of GSK, I want to express our regret and reiterate that we have learnt from the mistakes that were made,” he said in a prepared statement.