New year, new life. The purpose, repeated ad nauseam these days, is not even painted to one of the ugly ducklings of the Ibex of recent times. And it is that, after the storm, calm has come to Grifols. The group of blood products is shining with its own light on the floor in these first stages of the year. So much so that its shares have appreciated by 15% in the first two weeks of the year. Nothing to do with last fall, when their titles were paid at the lowest price in the last decade.
A lot has had to do with this change of course. relay in the dome of the company: the appointment of Steven Francis Mayer (Los Angeles, 1960) as executive president, replacing Víctor Grifols Roura, who has led the firm for the last 20 years. That, and the increase in sales by almost 20% during the third quarter of last year, of course.
Chief executive of the firm since last September and first person outside the Grifols family who takes over the reins of the laboratory founded in 1940, Mayer knows the company well, in which he landed as a newly released director in 2011 and in which he will now share the front line of fire with Víctor Grifols Jr. and his brother Raimon, both co-CEOs since 2017.
Graduated in Letters, how praisefrom Princeton University (New Jersey) and in Law, with great praiseat Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Massachusetts), has, however, the American an eminent financial profile. And this is because he has held seats on the boards of directors of more than thirty listed and unlisted companies. And above all, because of his career at Cerberus, one of the largest investment funds in the world, where, among other things, he chaired the investment committee. Big words.
His many flight hours in the capital markets come in handy for Grifols, weighed down by the weight of its massive debt: almost 9,000 million euros.
not to mention your experience in the pharmaceutical industry, which also has it. He was the one who commanded the team that Talecris bought and managed after his split from Bayer. It was later, when Grifols bought that company, thus setting foot on the other side of the pond, that Mayer joined the board of the Catalan multinational.
I will have to combine both to get Grifols out of the quagmire in which the pandemic plunged her. To summarize: it uses blood plasma to make medicines; and, it goes without saying, that blood draws collapsed—like so many other things—all over the world during the health crisis. Quite a blow to the heart of the Catalan business.
In addition to business, economics, and politics, Americans are passionate about sports. especially for baseball and basketball. The first one he played in his college days; and practicing the second he has represented his country up to two times in the Maccabee Games, a kind of Olympics that are held every four years in Israel reserved for Jewish athletes.
He also ensures that he enjoys what is his and more traveling. More than 60 countries he claims to have stepped on. Surely it won’t take long for him to join that more than enviable list.
.