Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier To Retire At The End Of June
There are literally a handful of Black Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) at America’s Fortune 500 companies – and that number will shrink once more in June when Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier retires. The company made the announcement Frazier would be retiring Thursday, Feb. 4.
Frazier, 66, has led the pharmaceuticals giant for 10 years and worked with it for 30, according to Reuters. He began his tenure with the company serving as general counsel and was key to its success in several big cases before being appointed CEO in 2011.
Under Frazier’s leadership, Merck has become the top, go-to manufacturer of cancer immunotherapy drugs with its Keytruda surpassing Bristol Myers Squibb’s comparable drug. IT is also well known for its Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) and Bridion, which reverses effects of neuromuscular blocking drugs, Forbes reported.
The grandson of a sharecropper, Frazier also made headlines in 2017 when he resigned from then-President Donald Trump’s manufacturing council after Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He will be succeeded by Merck’s current Chief Financial Officer Robert Davis, who said Frazier is irreplaceable.
“His shoes won’t be easy to fill in so many ways, both within Merck but also including his many principled and valuable contributions to important issues facing society today,” Davis said.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin
Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
News of Frazier’s retirement comes just weeks after the company announced in a press release it would stop development of its Covid-19 vaccine candidates, but continued development on two investigational therapeutic candidates.
It was a process Davis said he was not willing to rush for the sake of beating out the competition, noting the clinical trials needed to be “very large” and that he didn’t want his company to be held accountable for a rushed timeline.
“Speed is one factor, but in some ways we don’t really accept the concept of a race,” Frazier said. “We understand the urgency, but our goal isn’t to be the frontrunner in the early stages — it’s to develop a vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Frazier added it was “a grave disservice to the public” to make promises about a vaccine they couldn’t keep.
“Let me start by saying, I think when people tell the public that there’s going to be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, I think they do a grave disservice to the public. I think at the end of the day, we don’t want to rush the vaccine before we’ve done rigorous science. We’ve seen in the past, for example, with the swine flu, that that vaccine did more harm than good. We don’t have a great history of introducing vaccines quickly in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep that in mind,” Frazier said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review.
Merck’s halting of their covid-19 vaccines shocked many because they are a leader in the industry. However, the company has done great work under Frazier’s leadership and he will be missed.
“On behalf of the entire Merck board, I thank Ken for his strong and highly principled leadership and his commitment to the company’s core values of scientific excellence, business integrity, patient focus and respect for all people,” said Les Brun, Merck’s lead independent director.