High Performance Boards, 2nd Edition

A New Board Arena for Joanne Marker: Chairing the Board

Joanne Marker sat in the back of the car and again reviewed her notes. From the top of her documents, she picked up the biography of her lunch host George Drakos, Chairman of the board of Nordic PharmaSolutions (an innovative large cap pharma company, based in Denmark).

George is widely esteemed for his remarkable success as one of Europe's longest-serving CEOs. Over a span of 32 years with Olympus TechCrafters, he served as Chief Executive for 12 years. Before that, George held various high-ranking positions across Asia and Europe. George has been the Chairman of PharmaSolutions (150 billion market cap) for eight years. He is also the Chairman of CartoVision Technologies and a non-executive board member of TelePass Communications AG.

Joanne had met George only once before, when they were both on a panel on ‘Tech for Good’ in Davos a few years back. She had found him a calm presence, who had made thoughtful, deeply informed, and measured contributions, and obviously highly experienced. When she received his email a few weeks back, inviting her to lunch while he was in London, her curiosity was piqued. She guessed George must be approaching his late 60s by now. As the car passed the Royal Academy of the Arts, the intuition that George might be looking for a successor as Chair of PharmaSolutions again crossed her mind. George was not the kind to outstay himself.

The company mission was certainly compelling: ‘To revolutionize ...