By Rajasik Mukherjee
Feb 10 (Reuters) – Australia’s CSL tapped insider Gordon Naylor as interim CEO on Tuesday after announcing the retirement of current chief Paul McKenzie, as the biotech firm seeks to soothe shareholder worries over falling U.S. vaccination rates and profit growth.
The changes come at a pivotal time for CSL, which has been at the receiving end of investors’ wrath over its share price performance. Once Australia’s priciest stock, CSL plunged about 39% last year in its biggest annual drop since 2002.
Naylor, currently a non-executive director, first joined CSL in 1987 before leaving the firm in 2007 only to rejoin a few months later.
During his second stint, Naylor helmed the roles of the chief financial officer at CSL Seqirus and later its president until he left again in 2019. He rejoined in 2025.
“By putting the former head of the vaccine business in charge of the whole group… they are prioritising the fix of the very division that has been dragging down the stock,” said David Tuckwell, chief investment officer at ETF Shares.
“It’s an attempt to calm nerves by returning to a leader who understands the company’s DNA and its financial levers better than almost anyone else… (it’s) possibly a salvage mission.”
McKenzie joined CSL in 2019 as its chief operating officer and was responsible for the optimisation of company operations, as well as growing the CSL Seqirus, CSL Plasma, and CSL Vifor businesses. He was appointed as CSL CEO and MD in 2023.
During his tenure, Seqirus grew to be a lucrative division, generating $2.17 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025 – about 14% of the total.
Last year, CSL said it would spin off Seqirus into a separate entity and float it on the Australian Securities Exchange by June 2026.
However, CSL said in October it would delay the spin-off, blaming an unprecedented fall in U.S. flu immunisation rates, while cutting its 2026 revenue growth forecast.
CSL shares fell 5% on Tuesday, hitting their lowest level since January 7. The company is scheduled to report its half-year results on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Rajasik Mukherjee; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
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