Belén Garijo

Belén Garijo is a Spanish physician and pharmaceutical executive who has been chief executive of the French drugmaker Sanofi since 1 May 2026. From 1 May 2021 until 2026 she was chair of the executive board and chief executive of Merck KGaA, the Darmstadt group that is a separate company from Merck & Co. in the United States. When she took the Merck post she became the first woman to run a firm in Germany's DAX index on her own; Jennifer Morgan had been co-chief executive of SAP, with Christian Klein, from October 2019 until April 2020.

She was born in Almansa, in the province of Albacete, on 31 July 1960, the eldest of four children of a civil servant and a homemaker. She studied medicine at the University of Alcalá and graduated in 1983, then qualified as a specialist in clinical pharmacology at Hospital Universitario La Paz in Madrid. In a 2015 interview she said she had wanted a hospital career, had spent six years as a family doctor with the insurer Sanitas, and had moved into industry because drug research was hiring physicians with her training. Spanish coverage has also described her as a La Paz resident and as a participant in 1977 student protests against numerus clausus caps on places in medical school.

A curriculum filed for her directorship at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria places her at Abbott Laboratories from 1989 to 1996, as medical director in Madrid and then international medical director in Illinois, followed by oncology roles at Rhône-Poulenc and Aventis in Madrid and New Jersey and the general management of Aventis in Spain. From 2004 to 2006 she was general manager of Sanofi-Aventis in Barcelona, and from 2006 to 2011 president of commercial operations for Europe and Canada, based in Paris. Sanofi has said that in that European role she led the integration of Genzyme after its acquisition. She joined Merck in 2011, became chief executive of Merck Healthcare in 2015, vice chair and deputy chief executive in 2020, and group chief executive in 2021, succeeding Stefan Oschmann. She has been a BBVA director since 16 March 2012 and was a director of L'Oréal from 2014 to 2024.

Merck's share price roughly halved between the end of 2021 and late 2025, a stretch Semafor tied to weaker demand for COVID-19 testing products, competition for a bladder-cancer drug, and broader economic pressure, while Garijo cited a return to growth in 2024 and a handover to electronics chief Kai Beckmann. On 11 February 2026 Sanofi's board decided not to renew Paul Hudson; his last day as chief executive was 17 February, with Olivier Charmeil serving in the interim. The board said an amendment raising the age limit for a chief executive on appointment was required for her election. At the 29 April 2026 meeting, chaired by Frédéric Oudéa, shareholders approved the resolutions, including her appointment as a director, and she took office on 1 May. The company described her task as tighter execution and a more productive research organization; trade coverage linked Hudson's exit to disappointment that higher research spending had not filled the gap expected when major products lose exclusivity.

Early life and education

Almansa and family

Belén Garijo López was born on 31 July 1960 in Almansa, a town in the province of Albacete, in Castilla–La Mancha, Spain. She was the eldest of four children. A profile published in Almansa gives her parents as Francisco Garijo Ródenas and Josefa López Ruano. In a 2014 interview she identified her father, Francisco, as a retired employee of the offices of the Ministry of Labour and her mother, Josefa, as a homemaker, and said the household had stressed honesty, hard work and transparency. A 2015 magazine profile describes the same background more briefly: a civil servant in the employment administration and a homemaker.

Her own account of schooling is that a transfer of her parents took her through basic education in Madrid, followed by two years of bachillerato at the Colegio Episcopal in Almansa, before medicine. In 1977, at 17, she left the family home in Almansa for Alcalá de Henares.

University admission and the medical degree

A tightening of the numerus clausus on medical places initially kept her out. She later said that she had joined other students in occupying a faculty of medicine to protest the quota, and that she still treated a refusal to accept "no" as a quality she looked for in colleagues. El Mundo places that occupation at the start of her time in Alcalá, before classes.

The dispute also reached the national press. On 3 September 1977, students who had passed the selectividad but had been excluded from medicine approached Enrique Sánchez de León, then minister of health and social security, while he was visiting research centres in Madrid's Ciudad Universitaria. The Madrid edition of ABC led its front page the next day, a Sunday, with the headline "El grave problema de la selectividad en medicina." The paper reported that the minister said admissions were not his department's responsibility and told the group to see the director-general of health assistance the following day; the photograph was by Ángel Carchenilla. The caption does not name the students. At a 2016 awards ceremony, however, Sánchez de León said that an agreement arising from that university conflict had allowed Garijo and a large number of others to study medicine, and Garijo said the Sunday ABC cover was the first time she had appeared in the press. The German reference publisher Munzinger records the same sequence: a public protest and a discussion with the minister, photographed by ABC, after which the restriction was eased and she enrolled at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares.

She studied medicine and surgery there. The faculty's present incarnation had begun teaching in 1975 as an outpost of the Complutense University of Madrid and, from 1977, belonged to the refounded University of Alcalá. She received the licenciatura in medicine in 1983. Her curriculum vitae as a director of BBVA lists that degree, not a research doctorate.

Management studies

While already working, she later took a Master in Business and Management — in Spanish corporate biographies, a Máster de Negocio y Gestión — at Ashridge Management School in the United Kingdom. Published curricula do not give the year. Ashridge had been founded in 1959 as a management college. In July 2014 it announced a strategic alliance with Hult International Business School; a legal agreement was completed in February 2015, with the two schools setting out to combine operations while the qualification continued to be listed under the Ashridge name.

Medical training and hospital work

Clinical pharmacology at La Paz

A 2015 profile reported that Belén Garijo finished her medical degree at the University of Alcalá in 1983 and joined Hospital Universitario La Paz in Madrid as a resident. The curriculum vitae published for her BBVA directorship lists her as a specialist in clinical pharmacology at La Paz through the Autonomous University of Madrid. Sanofi’s biography says she began as a practicing physician at the hospital, and a 2026 notice from the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de España records the same residency, adding that she soon turned toward pharmaceutical research and development. None of these accounts gives the length of the residency.

Entrance to the maternity and children's hospital in the Hospital Universitario La Paz complex in Madrid.

El País, from a January 2021 interview in which she reviewed her career unprompted, reported that she had wanted internal medicine — described there as a kind of aristocracy within medicine — but that MIR places were extremely scarce, so she took clinical pharmacology at La Paz to stay in Madrid. Reports of what she did next, and for how long, do not match. A 2007 Expansión profile said the residency was her first job and that she then spent four years as a family doctor at Sanitas, a private health insurer; her TED biography also says four years as a physician in Madrid. In 2017 she said she had spent six years with patients in clinical pharmacology and internal medicine. A 2015 Expansión interview put six years of family medicine at Sanitas to her, which she did not correct, and she said the work let her stay with patients she could not cure and cure those she could. La Vanguardia in 2020 wrote of six years as a family doctor in a mutual insurer, without a permanent hospital post.

Move out of hospital medicine

Neither the four-year nor the six-year figure is easy to reconcile with a residency reported from 1983 or with the BBVA curriculum, which skips the clinical years and dates her as medical director of Abbott Laboratories in Madrid from 1989. Her stated reasons for leaving are not identical. In 2007 she said medicine remained her vocation, but that pharmaceuticals had seemed an attractive adventure; that profile said she then monitored clinical trials at Abbott, an industry post rather than hospital work. In 2015 she said she had wanted to be a hospital clinician but did not have that option, and that companies were hiring people with her training for research and development. In 2017 she called clinic life confining and short on professional growth, and said Abbott let her help develop medicines instead of only using other people’s. In 2021 she told El País that she had wanted to stay in the hospital but that no oposiciones, the exams for a permanent post, were being offered, and that industry seemed a chance to raise the professional profile a little; she again said she started at Abbott as a trials monitor. Cinco Días reported that she has said she might never have entered business if those exams had been called.

Entry into the pharmaceutical industry

Abbott Laboratories

After hospital practice, Garijo joined Abbott Laboratories in Spain. In a January 2021 interview with El País Semanal she said she began as a monitor of clinical trials, that the company’s first trials of an HIV medicine were run in Spain, and that after about a year and a half she was named medical director for the country, before moving to Chicago to lead international medical affairs.

A curriculum vitae published by BBVA, the bank on whose board she later served, dates the Madrid medical directorship to 1989–1994 and an international medical directorship in Illinois to 1994–1996. Profiles in Cinco Días have instead dated the Spanish post from 1988. In a 2017 interview with Pharmaceutical Executive she said she took the affiliate job because medical information was gaining weight in drug approval, and that Abbott then assigned her an international medical-affairs portfolio at its Illinois headquarters without, as she put it, obvious credentials for the role. She described the posting as the change from a practicing physician, dependent on other people’s ideas for new medicines, to a member of a large research-and-development organization. In 2015 she told Expansión that training in clinical pharmacology, not commercial experience, was what the company had treated as her qualification to run a research unit.

Rhône-Poulenc Rorer

She left Abbott in 1996 to direct the oncology business unit of Rhône-Poulenc Rorer. The BBVA curriculum places that job in Madrid from 1996 to 1999. El País, profiling her on 12 September 2004, gave the same step and called oncology one of the group’s main businesses, though it misprinted the year as 1966. A 2026 Cinco Días column instead located the 1996 appointment in Chicago, folding it into the earlier Abbott move. She later called the change one of the sharpest of her career, because it took her out of the medical function, which she described as her comfort zone, and into the commercial business.

Aventis

Hoechst and Rhône-Poulenc combined their life-sciences businesses as Aventis on 15 December 1999, when Rhône-Poulenc shareholders approved the transaction and the company took the new name. Garijo’s curriculum lists her next as director, in Madrid, for oncology, the central nervous system and insulin in 1999–2000, then as global president of oncology in New Jersey from 2000 to 2002. Expansión in 2015 and Cinco Días in 2020 use a different title, global vice president of oncology, date the post from 2000 after Rhône-Poulenc Rorer was combined with Hoechst Marion Roussel, and say she spent about three years in New Jersey before returning to Spain. The curriculum then groups 2002–2004 as general manager in Madrid. El País was more specific: she returned in September 2002 as deputy general manager of Aventis España and was promoted in July 2003 to general manager and vice president.

Sanofi-Synthélabo’s bid for Aventis, at first hostile, was accepted by the Aventis board in April 2004. The New York Times reported a revised offer valuing Aventis at about €55 billion ($65 billion), in a deal expected to create the world’s third-largest drug company. Les Echos reported that the offer settled on 20 August 2004, when Sanofi-Synthélabo held a little over 95 percent of Aventis and the buyer took the name Sanofi-Aventis.

On 12 September 2004 El País reported that Garijo had been chosen as general manager of the combined business in Spain, in a round of appointments that also named about 100 other senior executives worldwide, and that she still had to form a team and finish the local integration in the first months of 2005. One open decision was the head office. Sanofi’s Spanish company, with 1,076 employees and plants in Alcobendas and Girona, was based in Barcelona; Aventis España, with 850 employees and a plant in Alcobendas, was based in Madrid. She later said that leading the integration meant setting aside her own plan, cancelling several local product launches and moving the offices from Madrid to Barcelona, and leading a management committee that mixed a decentralized Aventis culture with executives used to direction from the center. The BBVA curriculum lists her as general manager in Barcelona for Sanofi-Aventis from 2004 to 2006.

Operational leadership in Europe

Spain and the Europe–Canada organization

In September 2004, after Sanofi-Synthélabo combined with Aventis, Belén Garijo was chosen to run the merged business in Spain, extending the general managership she held at Aventis España. El País reported that the appointment was announced with those of about 100 other senior executives, and that she was to finish the Spanish restructuring in the first months of 2005. Sanofi’s Spanish company, with 1,076 employees and plants in Alcobendas and Girona, was based in Barcelona; Aventis España, with about 850 employees and a plant in Alcobendas, had its head office in Madrid, and the city for the combined headquarters was still undecided. She later said the integration required moving the offices from Madrid to Barcelona, which she called unusually difficult because of regional identities.

In June 2006 she was promoted to senior vice president, pharmaceutical operations, for Europe and Canada, while remaining general manager in Spain; coverage called her the first Spanish woman in that international post. The 2007 annual report dates the appointment to July 2006 and gives the title as senior vice president, pharmaceutical operations, Europe and Canada, excluding France. She sat on the management committee (comité de direction) and was not among the executives marked as members of the smaller executive committee (comité exécutif). From 1 January 2008, commercial operations in Germany reported to her. By early 2010 the organization chart limited her heading to Europe and placed Canada with the United States under Gregory Irace; the 2009 registration document still listed her only on the management committee. As of 28 February 2011 the English annual review still called her senior vice president, pharmaceutical operations, Europe.

Later accounts use different wording for the same years. At her departure she was described as senior vice president, global operations, region Europe, the regional post under Hanspeter Spek, president of global operations. A biography filed for her BBVA directorship compresses 2006–2011 into “president of commercial operations for Europe and Canada,” based in Paris, and dates the Barcelona general managership only to 2004–2006. In August 2007 Expansión still presented her as both Spanish general manager and vice president for Europe and Canada, living between Paris and Barcelona while preparing a Spanish successor.

Genzyme integration

On 8 April 2011 Sanofi-aventis completed its purchase of Genzyme, which became a wholly owned subsidiary, for $74 in cash plus one contingent value right per share. The rights were tied to later milestones for Lemtrada and to 2011 production of Cerezyme and Fabrazyme. The company said Genzyme would be its global center of excellence in rare diseases, remaining headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that chief executive Christopher Viehbacher would lead Genzyme for several months.

Sanofi’s later corporate biography says that, as senior vice president of global operations, Europe, Garijo led the integration of Genzyme after the acquisition. In 2017 Pharmaceutical Executive described her as the global integration leader for the deal, alongside her earlier combination of Aventis and Sanofi in Spain. She said the board’s instruction had been not to “sanofize” Genzyme but to keep its independence and entrepreneurial culture inside the larger group, and that the team took Genzyme’s patient-centered approach as a model for the combined company. She left in July 2011, about three months after the closing.

Departure in 2011

On 27 June 2011 Sanofi announced that Peter Guenter, then general manager for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, would become senior vice president, Europe, from 15 July, reporting to Spek and joining the management committee. He succeeded Garijo, who the company said would leave for a global leadership role at another pharmaceutical company. Spek thanked her for 15 years with the company and said she had driven Sanofi’s transformation in Europe. That figure runs from her 1996 arrival at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, so it includes Aventis and the predecessor businesses rather than 15 years under the Sanofi name alone. El Global reported five years as senior vice president for Europe and said Sanofi had not named her next employer. Merck KGaA then appointed her chief operating officer of Merck Serono from 1 September 2011, a newly created post based in Geneva, reporting to Stefan Oschmann and covering worldwide commercial operations and marketing.

Leadership at Merck

Healthcare sector

Belén Garijo joined Merck KGaA, the Darmstadt science and technology company known as the Merck Group and unrelated to U.S. Merck & Co., in 2011 as chief operating officer of its biopharma business, Merck Serono. The post, effective 1 September 2011 and based in Geneva, was new: it covered worldwide commercial operations and marketing and reported to Stefan Oschmann, then president of Merck Serono. On 1 October 2013 she became president and chief executive of Merck Serono, succeeding Oschmann in that role as he moved to a wider pharmaceuticals brief.

From 1 January 2015 she was a member of the Merck KGaA executive board and chief executive of the Healthcare sector, which combined biopharma with consumer health and smaller related units. The move was announced in September 2014, at the same time Oschmann was named deputy chief executive of the group. The sector’s research was being rebuilt around oncology, immuno-oncology and immunology. Reuters reported in 2015 that as much as about 80 percent of the pipeline was directed at cancer and immuno-oncology, including the PD-L1 antibody avelumab, developed with Pfizer. Garijo said the drug was already “in the race” with checkpoint inhibitors that had reached the market earlier, and that Merck expected further cancer launches. A September 2015 reorganization of the healthcare executive team was described as a way to speed work in immuno-oncology, immunology and oncology after the earlier restructuring. Handelsblatt later credited the narrower research focus with higher sales and profits in the business.

On 13 July 2020 she was appointed vice chair of the executive board and deputy chief executive, while remaining head of Healthcare. On 28 September 2020 Merck said she would succeed Oschmann as chair of the executive board and group chief executive on 1 May 2021, with Peter Guenter named to follow her in Healthcare.

Sole chief executive of a DAX company

Garijo took the group posts on 1 May 2021, after Oschmann’s term. Deutsche Welle described her as the first woman to run, alone, one of the 30 companies then in the DAX, the blue-chip index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The only earlier woman at the top of a DAX company was Jennifer Morgan, who was co-chief executive of SAP with Christian Klein from October 2019 until April 2020, when SAP returned to a single chief executive under Klein. Garijo told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that being the first woman in the job was “not so important” to her; what mattered more was that she would not be the last woman at the head of a DAX company, and not the only one.

At the handover the Darmstadt group had about 57,000 to 58,000 employees and 2020 net sales of €17.5 billion, up from €16.1 billion the year before. It sold medicines, laboratory products and electronic materials, including lipids used by vaccine developers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Merck family controlled about 70 percent of the capital, which left management less exposed than many listed peers to demands that the group be split up. Because of a long-standing arrangement with Merck & Co., the Darmstadt company must be identified in the United States and Canada as Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Portfolio, results and succession

The business she took over had three sectors: healthcare, life science and electronics. At a capital markets day on 9 September 2021 she set a group sales ambition of about €25 billion by 2025, which implied average annual organic growth above 6 percent, with most of the increase expected from process solutions, new healthcare products and semiconductor materials. The target was missed. Reuters reported 2024 net sales of nearly €21.2 billion, a reported increase of 0.8 percent and organic growth of 2 percent, helped by pharmaceuticals such as Erbitux and Mavenclad and by semiconductor materials, while life science was lower for the full year as pandemic-related demand faded. For 2025 the company reported net sales of €21.1 billion, with organic growth of 3.1 percent more than offset by currency effects on a reported basis. Garijo told Reuters that assumptions made about the pandemic had not materialized.

Two late-stage healthcare programs that had been part of the growth case failed. In December 2023 evobrutinib, an oral inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase tested in relapsing multiple sclerosis, missed the primary goal in two Phase III trials: it did not reduce annualized relapse rates compared with teriflunomide. The share price fell sharply; the Financial Times put the drop at about 12 percent and noted that analysts had looked to the drug as a potential blockbuster ahead of patent expiry on Mavenclad. In June 2024 Merck stopped the Phase III TrilynX study of xevinapant plus chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced head and neck cancer after an interim analysis judged the trial unlikely to prolong event-free survival, and it halted a related Phase III study. The shares fell again. Commentary at the time treated the misses, with the distance from the 2021 sales ambition, as evidence that healthcare research had not produced the late-stage products the plan assumed and that more of the growth would have to be bought.

In April 2025 Merck agreed to acquire SpringWorks Therapeutics for $47 a share, an equity value of about $3.9 billion and an enterprise value of about $3.4 billion after the target’s cash. The transaction closed on 1 July 2025 and added two approved rare-tumor medicines, Ogsiveo (nirogacestat) for desmoid tumors and Gomekli (mirdametinib) for plexiform neurofibromas associated with neurofibromatosis type I. Garijo presented the purchase as a shift of healthcare toward rare tumors and a larger U.S. business; the company called it the largest healthcare acquisition in nearly 20 years. In a November 2025 interview, Semafor reported that the share price had roughly halved since the end of 2021, citing weaker COVID-related life-science demand, competition for a bladder-cancer drug, and currency and geopolitical pressure. Garijo said the group had returned to growth in 2024, described acquisitions as a “string of pearls” rather than deals for scale, and argued that owning three sectors had limited the damage from a pharmaceuticals downturn even if it encouraged a conglomerate discount.

On 25 September 2025 the Board of Partners of E. Merck KG, the general partner through which the family exercises control, announced that Kai Beckmann, chief executive of the electronics sector and an executive-board member since 2011, would succeed her as chair of the executive board and group chief executive on 1 May 2026. Her contract ended as scheduled at the close of April 2026; Beckmann became deputy chair when the succession was announced and was to keep the electronics post until a replacement was named. After leaving Merck she became chief executive of Sanofi.

Chief executive of Sanofi

Selection and the end of the Hudson mandate

On 11 February 2026 the board of Sanofi decided not to renew the director mandate of chief executive Paul Hudson. His last day in the role was 17 February, at the close of business. The board appointed Belén Garijo, then chief executive of Merck KGaA, to succeed him after the annual general meeting on 29 April, with Olivier Charmeil, executive vice-president for general medicines, as interim chief executive. Reuters reported that she would be Sanofi’s first female chief executive. The company said she would apply “increased rigor” to strategy, and that her priority would be the productivity, governance and innovation capacity of research and development.

Reporting on the removal did not describe it as a routine handover. Hudson, 58, had led Sanofi since 2019. CNBC characterised the tenure as a stalled attempt to replace blockbuster drugs nearing loss of patent protection, compounded by pressure on vaccines from U.S. anti-vaccine policy and rhetoric. Underwhelming trial updates in 2025 had helped push the shares down about 25% over the previous year. The Financial Times reported late-stage setbacks in eczema, multiple sclerosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and noted that dupilumab, sold as Dupixent and accounting for more than a third of sales, faced patent expiry in the early 2030s. In an interview with the paper, Hudson said he had expected the research turnaround to move faster and that the starting point had been further back than he had thought. Bloomberg reported that L'Oréal, Sanofi’s largest shareholder, had played a central part both in ending Hudson’s mandate and in selecting Garijo.

The shares fell on the day of the announcement. Reuters put the drop at about 3.5%; CNBC, describing the session, said nearly 6%. Analysts at Jefferies wrote that she “would not have been on many shortlists,” on the view that at Merck KGaA she had not matched the profile of some earlier executives there.

Age limit and the 2026 shareholder meeting

The appointment depended on a change to the articles. Garijo was born on 31 July 1960, and Article 16 then required a chief executive to be under 65 when appointed. Shareholders were asked to elect her a director and to raise that limit from 65 to 70, matching the limit already set for directors, so that the chief executive would have to be a physical person aged less than 70.

The combined general meeting was held on 29 April 2026 at 2:30 p.m. at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, with Frédéric Oudéa in the chair. Garijo was elected a director for four years, until the close of the 2030 meeting called to approve the 2029 accounts, with 98.00% of votes cast in favour, and the amendment to Article 16 passed with 97.44%. She took office as chief executive on 1 May 2026, and the board named her to its Strategic Committee.

Organization, pipeline and transactions

The first management changes addressed research and business development. Sanofi appointed Paulo Fontoura, formerly of Roche, to lead research and development, and widened the remit of chief financial officer François-Xavier Roger to include business development. Fontoura, a neurologist who had also been chief medical officer of Xaira Therapeutics after more than 15 years at Roche, was to join on 1 September 2026 as executive vice-president, global head of pharmaceutical research and development, succeeding Houman Ashrafian. From the same date, Roger’s finance role also took in enterprise business services and global partnering, and Charmeil moved to strategic-projects adviser to the chief executive.

A cut to the late-stage pipeline followed. On 24 July Sanofi stopped development of amlitelimab, an OX40-ligand antibody, in moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis and said it would not file the drug for approval in that disease. The company said the combined efficacy and safety evidence would not be a meaningful improvement on the standard of care, even though the phase 3 extension ESTUARY had shown maintenance of response without relapse; a phase 2 study in celiac disease continued. With second-quarter results on 30 July it also discontinued itepekimab and balinatunfib, and raised 2026 guidance: sales were now expected to grow by around 10% at constant exchange rates, from a previous high-single-digit forecast, with business earnings per share growing slightly faster. Reuters reported that the shares still fell 8%, with the market focused on the pipeline cuts, including an impairment of about €952 million tied to amlitelimab, and on the sales still to be replaced after Dupixent.

On 1 October Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals extended the antibody alliance that produced Dupixent. Regeneron was to receive $1 billion upfront and up to $7 billion more in development, regulatory and commercial milestones, about $8 billion in total, for four long-acting immunology antibodies it had invented. Costs and any future profits were to be split equally, Regeneron leading research and Sanofi commercialisation, while the existing Dupixent profit share was left as it was. The contract also settled earlier collaboration litigation; Regeneron had sued in 2024 over access to commercial information and audit rights. Dow Jones reported that Sanofi’s shares rose as much as 3.7% that day.

Third-quarter results on 30 October brought a further upgrade. Sales were €14.444 billion, up 14.3% at constant exchange rates, and full-year guidance moved to a low-teens percentage for sales and a mid-teens percentage for business earnings per share, both at constant rates. Garijo said the company was managing the decade after Dupixent’s loss of exclusivity, that steps to improve research productivity were under way, and that business development and acquisitions would be critical to that shift. Reuters reported that the shares rose nearly 6%, and that Roger had signalled interest in deals larger than a more typical range of about $2 billion to $5 billion, especially for late-stage or already marketed medicines in immunology, rare diseases and vaccines.

Outside directorships

BBVA

Belén Garijo López has been a non-executive director of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria since 16 March 2012. On 15 March 2024, at the end of the three-year term that began with her re-election on 20 April 2021, shareholders re-elected her as an “other external” director for a further statutory three-year period, after a favorable report from the Appointments and Corporate Governance Committee. The board said that category, rather than independent status, was required because she was about to complete twelve uninterrupted years from her first appointment, under article 1.1 of the board regulations. The 2025 directors’ remuneration report listed her for the whole year as an “other non-executive director,” not as an independent director.

When that re-election was proposed she chaired the Remuneration Committee and sat on the Executive Committee and the Appointments and Corporate Governance Committee, and the papers noted earlier service on the Audit Committee. On 26 April 2024 the board changed the committees: she remained on the Executive Committee and the Appointments and Corporate Governance Committee, and left the Remuneration Committee, which Ana Revenga Shanklin then chaired. For 2025 BBVA reported €360,000 accrued to her: €342,000 in cash (€129,000 for the board, €167,000 for the executive committee and €46,000 for appointments and corporate governance) and €18,000 for health and casualty insurance.

L'Oréal

Garijo was a director of L'Oréal from 2014, on a term the 2023 universal registration document listed as expiring in 2026, and a member of the Human Resources and Remuneration Committee. The document stated that she held 1,000 L’Oréal shares and that she was chair of the executive board and chief executive of the Merck Group. On 8 February 2024 the board’s annual review qualified her as an independent director and recorded her wish to leave at the close of the annual general meeting on 23 April 2024, two years early, for reasons of availability connected with her professional work. The board described that service, on the board and the human-resources committee, as ten years. She had told BBVA she would resign from L’Oréal at that meeting. The 2024 universal registration document confirms that she stepped down then and was unable to attend two meetings of her committee that year.

Bloomberg reported in February 2026 that L’Oréal played a key role in the ouster of Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson and in the choice of Garijo as successor. Global Cosmetics News described L’Oréal as Sanofi’s largest shareholder in its account of that succession and noted her directorship there from 2014 to 2024.

Unilever

On 7 October 2025 Unilever announced her appointment as an independent non-executive director from 13 May 2026, while she was still to remain Merck Group chief executive until the end of April 2026. She did not take the seat. On 28 July 2026 Unilever said she had informed the company she could not take up the directorship, by then expected during 2027, because her appointment as Sanofi chief executive in May 2026 left her without the time.

Industry forums and public positions

Business round tables and advisory bodies

The European Round Table for Industry published a member page for her in June 2021, when she chaired Merck KGaA; it now lists her as chief executive of Sanofi.

On 7 November 2023 the European Union–Japan Business Round Table named her to succeed Philippe Wahl of La Poste as EU-side chair. She was represented when its 2023 recommendations went to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on 16 February 2024, and she first co-chaired the annual meeting, in Tokyo on 12 February 2025, with Nobuhiro Endo of NEC. Kai Beckmann, her successor at Merck, later held that chair.

The German Chemical Industry Association (Verband der Chemischen Industrie) appointed her to its Präsidium on 30 September 2021. She remained listed, for Merck, after the elections of 12 September 2024 and 25 September 2025; the current Präsidium page does not include her.

The European Innovation Council describes her as a former member of its board, which advises the European Commission. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lists her on its board as Sanofi’s chief executive, and The Business Council lists her as an active member.

China visits and industrial policy

In November 2022 she was one of twelve executives with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on his first visit to China as chancellor, a one-day stop in Beijing. Manager Magazin reported about 4,600 Merck employees at eleven Chinese sites and 2021 sales there of €2.9 billion, about 15 percent of revenue; Merck said it saw the geopolitical risks but wanted dialogue to continue, and described about €100 million over six years for bioprocessing capacity in Wuxi. Scholz, the government said, called China an important partner “notwithstanding the changed circumstances” and sought easier market access and stronger intellectual-property protection.

From 14 to 16 April 2024 she was again in the economic delegation, in Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing. The government’s answer to the Bundestag named Belén Garijo López of Merck and linked the trip, under the motto “Gemeinsam nachhaltig handeln,” to the 2023 China strategy. It said Scholz told Premier Li Qiang that China remained important for Germany and Europe if competition was fair, citing market access, intellectual property and legal certainty.

In a November 2025 Süddeutsche Zeitung interview reported by Hasepost, she called decoupling from China impossible, said there was no global trade without it, and said Chinese sales also supported Merck in Europe and the United States, while the firm had widened its risk management.

Remarks on women in leadership

On becoming, in May 2021, the first woman to run a DAX company alone, she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, as carried by The Local: “It’s more important to me not to be the last woman at the top of a company than to be the only one.” She added, “I am against all forms of discrimination, including positive discrimination.”

Deutsche Welle quoted economist Monika Schnitzer that the appointment would be judged on “whether women are up to the job of being CEOs,” and that it was “a long-overdue step.”

In a Handelsblatt Disrupt interview published on 1 August 2025, she said, “Ich bin kein Fan von erzwungenen Frauenquoten” (“I am not a fan of forced quotas for women”).

Compensation and assessments

Pay at Merck and director fees

Merck KGaA reports pay under section 162 of the German Stock Corporation Act as compensation “awarded or due” in the fiscal year—amounts paid or legally due then—and, separately, a voluntary “compensation for the fiscal year” that assigns variable pay to the performance year. On the statutory measure Garijo received €6.145 million in 2024, 37.9% below €9.889 million in 2023, and €7.690 million in 2025, up 25.1%. Base salary was €1.5 million in both years. The 2024 statutory total was salary, fringe benefits and profit share earned for 2023; the 2025 total added 2024 profit share and a €1.619 million payout on the 2021 long-term incentive, already included in the voluntary 2024 column. Voluntary totals therefore moved the other way: €7.692 million for 2024 and €6.106 million for 2025. Pension service cost, outside the statutory figure, was €640,000 and €642,000. The chair’s maximum under section 87a was €11.5 million, with a €9.8 million contractual cap on direct pay.

An EY study of 2024 pay at DAX, MDAX and SDAX companies, reported by ZDF, ranked her the highest-paid woman in that sample, at €7.63 million of fixed pay and bonuses—near the voluntary 2024 figure, not the statutory one. She was not among the highest-paid DAX chief executives: a Handelsblatt compilation reported by Tagesschau put the average near €6.3 million and SAP’s Christian Klein near €19 million, and listed Garijo among those paid less than the year before. L'Oréal fees awarded for 2024 and paid in 2025 were €13,900, after she left that board on 23 April 2024; the 2023 award was €81,025.

Shareholder returns and research productivity

Semafor reported on 14 November 2025 that the shares had halved since the end of 2021 as demand ebbed for the COVID-19 testing kits that had taken them to record levels, competition rose for a bladder-cancer drug, and economic, geopolitical and currency pressures built. Garijo said Merck had “returned the company to growth in 2024 in a very challenging environment,” and blamed part of the weakness on a “conglomerate discount.” Merck’s 2025 report said the price fell about 12.4% that year, from €139.90 to €122.60, lagging the DAX (about +23%) and a pharmaceutical-sector gain of about 7.2%. It called organic sales growth moderate and in line with guidance, and tied lower earnings per share pre mainly to the SpringWorks acquisition. Reported net sales peaked at €22.232 billion in 2022 and were €21.102 billion in 2025. The dividend rose from €1.85 for 2021 to €2.20 for 2022 and was held there, including the 2025 proposal. Net financial debt fell from €8.753 billion at the end of 2021 to €7.155 billion at the end of 2024, then rose to €8.619 billion. The 2024 compensation report said the personnel committee set every executive’s profit-sharing factor at 1.0, crediting a return to growth.

Late-stage research was weaker. BioSpace reported that in December 2023 the BTK inhibitor evobrutinib missed the primary endpoint of two Phase III trials in relapsing multiple sclerosis, with no significant cut in relapse rate versus Aubagio (teriflunomide). In June 2024 Merck stopped the Phase III TrilynX trial of xevinapant in unresected locally advanced head and neck cancer, and the related X-Ray Vision study, after an interim review made the event-free-survival goal unlikely. Healthcare chief medical officer Danny Bar-Zohar said the company was “disappointed” but remained committed to oncology.

Reaction to the Sanofi appointment

On 12 February 2026 the Sanofi board said it would not renew Paul Hudson’s mandate and that Garijo’s priority would be “to strengthen the productivity, governance, and innovation capacity” of research and development—a stated aim, not a delivered result. The articles capped a chief executive’s age at appointment at 65, so shareholders had to raise it to 70. On 29 April 2026 that change passed with 97.44% of votes cast, and her election as a director with 98.00%. The shares fell that day. Boursorama later put the drop at 4.2% and said investors were unenthusiastic; Investing.com said they were down more than 6% as Bank of America cut the stock to neutral and its target from €102 to €92, citing thin near-term catalysts and uncertainty from the succession.

Later steps were mixed. On 30 July Sanofi dropped a global filing for amlitelimab and discontinued itepekimab and balinatunfib, while lifting 2026 guidance to about 10% sales growth at constant exchange rates. On 1 October it expanded the Regeneron Pharmaceuticals alliance, paying $1 billion upfront and up to $7 billion in milestones for four long-acting immunology antibodies, which Garijo called “a deliberate first step in igniting Sanofi’s innovation engine.” On 30 October guidance rose again, to low-teens sales growth and mid-teens business earnings-per-share growth, and she said the company had “already begun taking action to improve R&D productivity” before loss of exclusivity on dupilumab (Dupixent).

Personal life and recognition

Family

Garijo is married to a Spanish physician who practices urology. A 2020 El Mundo profile named him Dr. Mora and their daughters Irene, born in 1991, and Belén, born in 1995. A Cinco Días profile that July described her husband as a doctor, gave the daughters’ ages as 29 and 24, and said the younger was then in the final years of a medical degree.

In a January 2021 interview with El País, she said the daughters had grown up around two demanding careers—hers in business and her husband’s in surgery—and that moving countries had been a joint decision. She called the postings a family adventure that put the children in schools of different ethnicities, cultures and languages, while also saying there were periods when they stayed in Spain and she traveled alone; once they were independent, her husband joined her. Cinco Días listed the places she had lived as Chicago, New Jersey, Barcelona, Paris, Geneva and, in 2020, Frankfurt, and called Madrid home. El Mundo, citing an earlier interview, reported that in the Paris years she commuted each week so the daughters would not have to move, and that the move to Geneva left one at university and the other finishing school.

The elder daughter, Irene Mora, spoke in November 2017 at TED@Tommy. The TED talk, “For women in pursuit of motherhood and a career,” described a childhood of international moves with a mother running a multinational. Garijo told El País that the talk, which treated that experience with humor, had moved her. The Cinco Días profile added that a Real Madrid league title was celebrated at home wherever she was living.

Honors and published rankings

On 27 November 2020 the full council of Almansa unanimously named her Hija Predilecta of the city for her professional record, on a proposal from Mayor Javier Sánchez Roselló. The presentation, delayed by the pandemic and her schedule, was held in the council chamber on 11 March 2023. On 11 May 2023 the governing council of Castilla–La Mancha granted the regional title of Hija Predilecta for her career in the pharmaceutical industry; the agreement appeared in the official gazette on 31 May 2023.

On 11 June 2026 the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de España announced its Medal of Honor, citing an outstanding contribution to the progress of the medical sciences and the conversion of knowledge into tangible benefits for people. The notice identified her as the chief executive of Sanofi, a post she had taken up the previous month after leading Merck KGaA.

Forbes, on its World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list, recorded her 68th in both 2022 and 2023, 70th in 2024 and 77th in 2025, each time in the business category; the Spanish edition of the 2023 list also placed her 68th. Fortune ranked her 30th on its 2023 Most Powerful Women list, as chair and chief executive of Merck KGaA, and 59th on the 2026 list, as chief executive of Sanofi.