South Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co. replaced its top executive in a move to reinforce the organization’s values and prowess to produce novel drugs after the company’s reputation was tainted by a series of disgraceful stumbles from a termination of a contract to a charge on illicit gains from delayed public disclosure.

The nation’s leading drug developer on Friday announced that it promoted senior executive vice presidents Woo Jong-soo and Kwon Se-chang to new chief executive officers of the company during a board of directors meeting. Woo will lead the management while Kwon heads the company’s new drug development.

Following the appointment of the new chiefs, Lee Kwan-soon who has served as CEO since 2010 will step down two years before his term ends and will serve as an advisor. Lee, who was credited for strengthening the firm’s research and development of new drugs, successfully retained CEO position for the third consecutive term last year with scheduled termination on March 15, 2019, but he was unable to avoid the removal from the office following a slew of setbacks in the company’s plan to go global and management.

The company’s blockbuster license-out deals with global pharmaceutical companies have been canceled or scaled down since late last year. Its exclusive license-out agreement with Genentech on its anti-cancer treatment was called off while the company and Sanofi agreed to remove one of candidate drug from their original deal aimed at developing three investigational diabetes drugs.

The company was also charged with purposefully delaying an announcement of license contract cancellation to avoid losses from inevitable toll on stock prices last year.

Separately, Hanmi Pharmaceutical recruited Kim Sun-jin, cancer biology professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the U.S., as its new R&D director and chief medical official, according to the company.

Shares of Hanmi Pharmaceutical closed Friday at 297,000 won ($256.59), up 1,000 won or 0.34 percent from the previous session.

By Shin Chan-ok

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]