SANOFI : New CEO makes early move to replace head of R&D

Research evidence excerpt

SANOFI : New CEO makes early move to replace head of R&D

EQUITIES

PHARMACEUTICALS

SANOFI NEUTRALPRICE* EUR74.1  TARGET PRICE EUR87 (UPSIDE 17%)

SANOFI ADR NEUTRALPRICE* USD42.4  TARGET PRICE USD51 (UPSIDE 20%)

FLASH NOTE

New CEO makes early move to replace head of R&D

22 JUNE 2026 Securities Research Report Production time: 07:53* (London time)

Research Analyst & Publishing Entities

Peter Verdult, CFA BNP Paribas London Branch (+44) 203 430 8683 peter.verdult@uk.bnpparibas.com

What happened?

Houman Ashrafian has been replaced as Head of R&D by Paulo Fontoura, former Head of Roche Neurology and more

recently Chief Medical Officer of Xaira Therapeutics. Separately, the FT is reporting potential industry M&A involving

Apogee, a potential competitor to Sanofi’s key growth driver Dupixent (see Implications for EU Pharma).

BNPP View:

The new CEO has acted swiftly to make her mark with a change in R&D leadership. We do not expect the market to be

surprised by the move. This reflects a disappointing period of R&D newsflow (4 Ph III assets have failed or materially

disappointed) and business development efforts to expand the pipeline proceeding more slowly than expected. With

Houman spending the past three years supposedly pivoting the business and revamping the senior leadership team,

there is now another period of potential disruption to navigate. We hosted the Sanofi CFO at our BNPP Conference

earlier this month in Paris. While Immunology, Rare Diseases and Vaccines are likely to remain key therapeutic areas

Neurology is likely to be de-prioritised in light of the failure of tolebrutinib in MS. With that in mind we find it interesting

to note that the new head of R&D comes from a Neuroscience background.

Fontoura is a board-certified neurologist and physician-scientist.