Sanofi has just officially announced what many saw coming: Paul Hudson will not continue as CEO. A change that says a lot about the state of a big pharma under pressure.

Paul Hudson was brought into Sanofi in 2019 with a clear mandate: to revive the drug pipeline and boost the stock price. Six years later, the results are complicated. Sure, he had successes — Dupixent continues to be a cash cow with sales reaching €4.2 billion in Q4 2025, up 32.2%. But that’s also the problem: the company has remained too dependent on a single drug, and the market knows it.

What sank Paul Hudson, however, was the management of the vaccine segment. In Q4, sales fell 2.5% to €2 billion, with Beyfortus experiencing a 14.9% plunge. Sure, influenza and COVID vaccines performed better with a +31.5% increase, but that wasn’t enough to compensate. Investors were annoyed, the Board started demanding ‘greater discipline’ — and here we understand the real message.

In his place comes Belén Garijo, former CEO of Merck KGaA since 2021. A very different profile: the first woman to lead a DAX40 company in Germany, and the Board is clearly betting on her to bring a more rigorous management style. Her priorities will be to strengthen productivity and accelerate the development of new drugs, with amlitelimab potentially becoming the successor to Dupixent.

The transition will officially occur on April 29, 2026, while Olivier Charmeil, VP of Executive, General Medicines, will serve as interim until then. Meanwhile, the market has already reacted: the SNY stock has dropped 6.25% in pre-market trading to $46.17.

This story of Paul Hudson at Sanofi is a good reminder that even big pharma companies are not immune to market pressures. Sometimes you are hired to save a company, but if you fail to diversify risk and innovate quickly, your time will run out anyway.