CVS to Hire Former Eli Lilly CFO to Run Pharmacy Benefit Business
21 March 2018 - 1:32AM
Dow Jones News
By Sharon Terlep
CVS Health Corp. tapped a former Eli Lilly & Co. finance
chief to run its pharmacy benefit business as the drugstore giant
works to complete an acquisition of insurer Aetna Inc.
Longtime Eli Lilly CFO Derica Rice is set to take over CVS
Caremark on March 30, according to an internal CVS memo reviewed by
The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Rice will replace Jonathan Roberts,
who was promoted last year to the role of chief operating
officer.
"With growing concerns over the affordability of prescriptions,
the role of the pharmacy benefit manager has never been more
important to the healthcare system," CVS said in the memo,
announcing the appointment to managers.
Pharmacy-benefit managers are middlemen in health care that help
select which drugs are covered for patients and negotiate discounts
with drugmakers.
CVS, with its $69 billion acquisition of Aetna, aims to create a
vertical healthcare enterprise in which pharmacists are central to
patient care and the company's vast network of drug stores will
provide services from lab testing to infusion of specialty
medications.
Mr. Rice worked at Lilly for about 27 years and served as chief
financial officer from 2006 until retiring in December. He served
as interim CEO at the Indianapolis drug maker for a few months in
2013 when then-CEO John Lechleiter took a medical leave.
Mr. Rice helped craft Lilly's strategy to weather a period of
patent expirations for top-selling drugs that caused the company's
sales to decline sharply in 2014. The company cut costs and
licensed rights to new drugs to help offset some of the sales
decline.
Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2018 10:17 ET (14:17 GMT)
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