BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, U.K., Oct. 9, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Amersham plc (NYSE:AHM) (LSE:AHM) today announces the appointment of Peter Loescher as President of Amersham Health and an Executive member of the Amersham plc Board. Mr Loescher, 45, is currently Chairman & CEO of Aventis Pharma Japan. He will join the company and become a member of the Board on December 1 and will assume the role of President of Amersham Health on January 1.
Mr. Loescher will succeed Dr. John Padfield, Chief Executive of Amersham Health and Executive Board member of Amersham plc since 1999. Following Sir William Castell's agreement to continue for the foreseeable future in his role as Chief Executive of Amersham plc in order to lead the delivery of the company's vision of enabling personalised medicine, Dr. Padfield has decided to retire from the company at the end of the year to pursue a portfolio of other opportunities.
Mr. Loescher, an Austrian national, joined Hoechst AG in 1988 after two years as a senior management consultant at the Kienbaum Consulting Group in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has undertaken a wide variety of roles at Hoechst and its successor company Aventis, working in the USA, Germany, the U.K. and Spain as well as Japan. In 1996 he was appointed Head of Corporate Planning, reporting directly to Hoechst Chairman Juergen Dormann, helping to implement the company's strategy of becoming a focused life sciences business and overseeing Hoechst's successful New York Stock Exchange listing in 1997.
In 1997, Mr. Loescher became Chief Executive Officer of Hoechst Marion Roussell Ltd. in the U.K., and, in 1999, was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Aventis Pharma in Japan, the world's second largest pharmaceutical market. He was named Chairman of the Japanese business in 2001. Mr. Loescher is a graduate of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and has also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Harvard Business School.
Sir William Castell, Chief Executive of Amersham, said: "Peter brings invaluable experience of the global pharmaceutical and life sciences industries to Amersham Health as we work to strengthen our leadership in medical diagnostics, and to develop strategies to seize the many opportunities open to us in personalised medicine. He has the good fortune to be able to build on the excellent work achieved by John Padfield in over three years with the company, during which time Amersham Health has established itself as a clear global leader helping to create significant shareholder value for the company. John has made a major contribution to Amersham Health and the Amersham Board and we wish him every success in the next stage of his highly distinguished career. With Peter joining Amersham Health and Andrew Carr, President of Amersham Biosciences, being appointed to the Board earlier this year, we now have a new generation of leaders ready to face the exciting challenges ahead."
Amersham plc (LSE:AHM) (NYSE:AHM) (Oslo:AHM) is a world leader in medical diagnostics and in life sciences. Headquartered in the U.K., the company has annual sales of 1.6 billion pounds (U.S. $2.3 billion) and 9,500 employees worldwide. Its strategy is to build its position as a leading provider of products and technologies enabling disease to be better understood, diagnosed earlier and treated more effectively. For more information, visit our website at www.amersham.com