GSK's chief executive Luke Miels has committed to a transparent communication strategy after telling analysts during its Q3 financial call that “we are not going to park crap on Page 41 of a press release and hope none of you notice it.”
Miels became GSK CEO back in January. During his latest earnings call, Miels took the opportunity to make a high-level point about how he wants to communicate with the owners of the company, analysts and the market more broadly. Miels rejected the strategy of burying bad news deep in GSK’s corporate communications.
“Look, we are going to call things as we see them,” Miels said. “We will tell you as much as we can. We will have a plan to address it. Please, just adjust your parameters on that because that’s how we want to operate. All right?”
The CEO made the comment while answering a question about leadership changes at ViiV Healthcare, GSK's HIV business. Last week, ViiV revealed that its CEO, Deborah Waterhouse, is leaving the company to take the top job at CSL. ViiV has promoted Lynn Baxter, currently president of GSK Europe, to replace Waterhouse.
As an analyst noted on the earnings call, the CEO change followed the departure of ViiV's chief financial officer and head of R&D earlier this year. The analyst asked if the leadership changes are connected and whether GSK is rebooting its HIV business under Miels.
The CEO rejected the suggestion that the changes are connected, explaining that R&D chief Kimberly Smith retired and that Waterhouse received the sort of promotion offer that doesn’t “come along every day.” Miels said he wants ViiV “to be closer and so there will be more intensive interaction and supervision there, but that is not a bad thing.”