ESTEVE has announced today the appointment of Thomas B Riisager as Chief Corporate Strategy & Business Development Officer, to be heading Corporate Strategy & Business Development for the pharmaceutical group. On May 1st, Mr. Riisager will join the company, being part of the Executive Management and reporting to the CEO, Staffan Schüberg.

The new position has been set up as part of the strategic roadmap, which focuses on transforming ESTEVE into a proprietary specialty pharmaceutical company. This focus requires ESTEVE to supplement its internal R&D pipeline with high quality assets from external sources. On the path towards becoming a proprietary specialty pharma company, ESTEVE needs to gain access to external innovation through product partnerships or acquisitions, as well as through strategic alliances.

Mr. Riisager has more than 15 years of experience in business development, including in- licensing, out-licensing as well as acquisitions of numerous products and companies in the pharmaceutical sector, and he has led several large acquisition projects. He has held important positions within Global Business Development, M&A and Portfolio Management. Until his appointment at ESTEVE, Mr. Riisager was VP and Head of Global Business Development and Strategy at Lundbeck, Valby, Denmark.

He holds a MSc in Economics from the University of Copenhagen and has studied in the management of Mergers, Acquisitions and Investments from the Copenhagen Business School and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA).

"Thomas has a proven track record in establishing alliances, managing acquisitions across global companies" said Mr. Schüberg, "I’m sure he will help us foster our exciting journey of transformation into a global proprietary company in the neurosciences segment"
In Mr. Riisager words, "I am proud and humbly to take on this important and highly interesting position as Head of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at ESTEVE. I am certain that – via close collaboration with the ESTEVE management team, the ESTEVE Board and the rest of the ESTEVE employees – that we will succeed in becoming a global specialty pharma company"