🔵 Sanofi. Appointment of Belén Garijo. What the board isn’t saying

€43.6 billion in revenue.

A blockbuster — Dupixent — accounting alone for nearly 36% of total sales.

More than 50% of the business exposed to the United States.

On paper, everything looks solid.

In reality, fragility is beginning to emerge.

Because this kind of setup doesn’t create a performance issue.

It creates a strategic dependency issue.

So the board acts. Fast. Brutally. Without transition.

Paul Hudson’s departure is not a succession.

It is a silent signal of distrust.

And the choice of Belén Garijo is no coincidence.

External. Yet a former insider.

Scientific. Yet operational.

CEO. But above all… structuring.

She is not here to embody a vision.

She is here to reorganize the ability to decide.

That is where the real shift lies.

Because when a board changes its own bylaws — even raising the age limit — to appoint a leader, it is not hiring a profile.

It is imposing a solution.

HUMINT:

This is not about R&D.

This is not about growth.

This is about the quality of internal decision-making.

Sanofi has more than 80 projects in its pipeline.

But the question is no longer “how many?”

It is:

which ones will survive… and why?

At moments like this, organizations drift.

Too many projects. Too many egos. Too many internal narratives.

What the board is looking for is not a visionary.

It is a human decision filter.

At Merck KGaA, Garijo did not build a spectacular narrative.

She built a disciplined, readable, arbitrated machine.

Exactly what is missing when a group becomes dependent on a single engine.

A useful comparison:

Bill Anderson at Bayer.

Also recruited externally.

Also mandated to break inertia.

But here is the key nuance:

Bayer recruited to destroy a system.

Sanofi is recruiting to regain control of its own.

More subtle.

And often more complex.

Because the real risk is not visible failure.

It is the invisible erosion of decision-making.

The moment when no one truly decides anymore.

When alignment replaces conviction.

This is precisely where HUMINT comes in.

Reading real dynamics.

Identifying friction points.

Understanding who truly influences… and why.

What Sanofi’s board has understood — and few articulate — is that future performance does not depend only on the pipeline.

It depends on the human map behind the pipeline.

Who decides.

Who blocks.

Who accelerates.

Who protects what.

And in these moments, the difference is not made in the numbers.

It is made in the blind spots.

Garijo arrives to expose them.

And above all… to act on them.

#HumintAdvisory