Thomas Schinecker is set to replace long-standing CEO, Severin Schwan, in the leadership shakeup Roche announced a few months ago. Schinecker is known for leading the company’s COVID-19 test kit efforts as the CEO of its diagnostics division, but he comes to the helm after an almost 20-year career at Roche.
In July, Roche announced that after 14 years Severin Schwan would be stepping into a board chair role and passing the CEO baton to Thomas Schinecker. Austrian-born Schinecker gained considerable notoriety as the CEO of Roche Diagnostics where he headed up COVID-19 test kit development and grew sales by 29 percent to USD 19.4 billion, but his career at Roche did not begin there.
Joining the company in 2003, Schinecker initially took on a management development program across multiple regions, including Asia. He then began his long history with diagnostics in 2005 when he became the head of marketing and sales for Roche Diagnostics in Austria, which then led him to a general manager role at Roche Diagnostics in Sweden and after two years in the US, to become the diagnostics division’s GM for Germany.
In 2018 Schinecker joined the global diagnostics team, taking the lead as its CEO in 2019. In a 2021 article, he spoke of the importance of diagnostics: “Whether it’s cancer, infectious diseases or other serious health threats, the quest for better solutions to healthcare’s greatest challenges depends on diagnostics.”
Schinecker is due to step into the new role in March. Matt Sause has been named to take on his former position.
