After losing majority shareholder support for his directorship at Blueprint Medicines last year, serial biotech entrepreneur Alexis Borisy has cut two outside titles to retain his seat at the company, which is further tightening its board policy.
Even before losing a majority vote in June 2023, Borisy had promised to be compliant within a year with Blueprint’s director over-boarding policy, which the Massachusetts biotech that he co-founded adopted earlier last year.
Since then, Borisy’s executive chairman role at EQRx ended when that firm was acquired by Revolution Medicines, where Borisy has been a board member since 2014. Then, Borisy didn’t stand for reelection on the board of OPKO Health during its annual shareholder meeting in March.
With those two director jobs gone, Borisy now counts board memberships at four public companies, meeting the maximum allowed under Blueprint’s over-boarding policy, according to a proxy filing. Besides Blueprint and Revolution, he is also the chairman of Relay Therapeutics and Tango Therapeutics. He is also the co-founder and operating chairman of Curie.Bio, a private venture capital firm.
Now in compliance, Borisy can keep his Blueprint role, with his term expiring in 2026. As was the case in 2022, Borisy attended all of the firm’s board meetings in 2023.
All members of Blueprint’s board are in compliance with the over-boarding policy, a company spokesperson confirmed to Fierce Pharma.
Last year, about 33 million Blueprint shares were withheld as an expression of disapproval of Borisy’s directorship, versus nearly 22 million shares supporting him. Over-boarding was the concern that cost Borisy majority shareholder support, Blueprint has said, citing shareholder feedback.
Blueprint last year made an exception to its over-boarding policy to let Borisy stay on. Despite securing less than 50% of the shares cast, Borisy was reelected at the time because Blueprint applies a plurality voting standard, which allows a board member to be elected with just one single vote during an uncontested election where the number of candidates equals the number of seats.
After that episode, some Blueprint shareholders expressed concern over the plurality rule for the election of board directors. In response, Blueprint this year added a director resignation policy, which requires director nominees to hand in their resignations promptly upon confirmation of receiving more “withhold” votes than “for” votes in an uncontested election.
Meanwhile, Blueprint these days is focused on the rollout of Ayvakit in indolent systemic mastocytosis (SM) after an FDA approval in May 2023. The company earlier this year pegged the rare disease drug could reach $2 billion in peak sales. Besides indolent SM, the drug is also approved in advanced SM and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.
Thanks in part to the indolent SM launch, Blueprint CEO Kate Haviland saw her 2023 compensation rise about 3.4% to $6.4 million.