Roche nominates two new members of board

Roche has announced the nomination of two new members for election to its board of directors during its December 2014 meeting.

Experienced life science professionals Bernard Poussot and Dr Richard Lifton have been nominated for membership, while it has also been confirmed that all current board members will stand for re-election.

Christoph Franz, chairman of Roche, described the nominees as "two outstanding individuals … who will bring significant experience from their careers in the pharmaceutical industry and in biomedical research, respectively".

Furthermore, it was announced that Dr Richard Scheller head of Genentech research and early development and member of the Roche corporate executive committee, will retire on December 31st 2014.

He will be succeeded in this role at the start of 2015 by Dr Michael Varney, the company's current head of small molecule drug discovery.

This comes at the end of a year of strong growth for Roche, during which it has announced the acquisitions of InterMune, Santaris Pharma, Seragon Pharmaceuticals, Genia Technologies and Ariosa Diagnostics.