US drugmaker Merck's Kenneth Frazier to step down as CEO in June-end

Merck & Co Inc said on Thursday Kenneth Frazier, one of only a handful of Black executives leading major US companies, would step down as chief executive officer at the end of June to be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Robert Davis.
 

Frazier, 66, will remain with the drugmaker as executive chairman for a transition period to be determined by the board.
 

Davis has been CFO of Merck since 2014 and has been in charge of the company's business development, real estate and other corporate strategic functions since 2016.
 

A career healthcare executive, he was the president of Baxter International Inc's medical products business before joining Merck and also spent 14 years at Eli Lilly and Co.
 

The grandson of a sharecropper, and son of a janitor, Frazier was set to retire in 2019, but the company scrapped a policy requiring CEOs to retire at the age of 65.

Under Frazier's watch, cancer drug Keytruda has raked in blockbuster sales for Merck and become one of the leading products in a new generation of oncology treatments.
 

Frazier's transition follows the recent retirement of Roger Perlmutter, who ran the company's research and development division for much of Frazier's tenure and was also considered a major force behind the success of Keytruda. Dean Li took over for Perlmutter on Jan. 1.
 

In the fourth quarter, sales of Keytruda rose 28.4% to $3.99 billion, beating Wall Street's estimates of $3.87 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
 

Still, Merck warned that the COVID-19 pandemic would hit sales of certain drugs, especially vaccines, in 2021.
 

Merck also projected operating expenses to be higher, as it ramps up spending on its COVID-19 antiviral programs after ending the development of two coronavirus vaccines.