Amgen Promotes CFO Bradway to President and COO - Succession Planning?

Amgen AMGN (NASDAQ), the world’s largest biotechnology company, announced the promotion of Robert Bradway, the firm’s CFO, to President and Chief Operations Officer. Bradway’s promotion comes at the same time it was announced that George Morrow, the firm’s highly regarded EVP of global commercial operations, would retire as of January 31, 2011. Amgen is currently awaiting a hoped-for approval from the FDA for its potential blockbuster osteoporosis drug denosumab. If the drug gets approved, Morrow would have been instrumental in the drug’s promotion and sale worldwide had his retirement not been announced. That new responsibility for sheparding the drug will now pass to Bradway.

Bradway’s promotion indicates he is being groomed for the CEO position held by Kevin Sharer. Sharerwho is currently 62, is expected to retire upon his 65th birthday. All eyes should keep a close eye on Bradway. A Reuters article raised the specter that Amgen is moving more and more away from research and development towards acquisitions. The article pointed to Bradway’s promotion as another indicator of this growing trend.

Recommended Reading - The real outrage is how CEOs are paid, not how much, Fortune

Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large for Fortune, wrote a thought provoking piece entitled, The real outrage is how CEOs are paid, not how much. Colvin looked at CEO compensation from a different angle than is typically viewed with regard to today’s stratospheric CEO salaries. He was not very concerned about the high salaries but rather in the often wrong- headed approach to executive salaries particularly when it came to CEOs. If you are interested in executive compensation and its impact on stock and corporate performance Colvin’s piece is a must read.

Bank of America's Moynihan makes Smart Move

Earlier today Bank of America BAC (NYSE) under the new leadership of Brian Moynihan made a smart move. The bank appointed Charles Noski as the new CFO. His appointment will fill the vacancy that has been open for a significant amount of time. Noski, an outsider to the bank, is highly qualified. According to Bank of America’s press release.

Noski had been the CFO of defense contractor Northrop Grumman, AT&T, Hughes Electronics and United Technologies. He has also served as a board member for a number of Fortune 500 firms including Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, ADP and others.

The bank continues to make significant management change related steps to right the ship and start moving ahead. This latest major appointment comes on the heels of a number of management related changes Moynihan has already taken in his short tenure as BofA’s new CEO.

For more:

Reuters

Declining Executive Turnover May Have Bottomed - Good News for the Economy?

Executive turnover has continued to decline throughout the great economic recession. Liberum’s latest quarterly turnover numbers for CEOs, CFOs, Board of Directors and C-level executives (defined to include CEOs, board of directors, CFOs, COOs, down to VP level) continued to show a drop in turnover for all key categories for the first quarter of 2010. This declining trend in executive turnover has continued since the first quarter of 2008 for all key executive turnover categories (see the CEO, CFO and C-level graphs below for quarterly turnover comparisons). For the first time since early 2008, Liberum expects the declining trend in executive turnover to have bottomed. We expect to see turnover numbers to begin to increase as we move into the second quarter of 2010.

While the first quarter of 2010 continued to show significant declines in executive turnover when compared with the first quarter of 2009, we have finally seen the overall executive turnover declines slowing when the figures are compared with the last quarter of 2009. If this trend continues, increased executive change at the top of companies may actually mean the economy is in for real expansion and growth.

GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF QUARTERLY EXECUTIVE TURNOVER 2005 - 2010