The Board of Partners of E. Merck KG, based in Germany, has recently appointed Garijo as their new Chair of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck effective May 1, 2021.

Garijo is currently Vice-Chair of the Executive Board and Deputy CEO of Merck as well as CEO Healthcare. Stefan Oschmann will hand over the Chair of the Executive Board of Merck to Belén Garijo in 2021. Oschmann will leave the company as planned after ten years on the Executive Board, five of them as Chairman and CEO, to turn to other tasks.

Peter Guenter will join the Executive Board of Merck effective January 1, 2021, at the latest. He will assume board responsibility for the Healthcare business sector and will be located in Darmstadt, Germany. Since 2017, Guenter has been CEO of the publicly listed pharma company Almirall in Barcelona, Spain. Like Merck, the company is predominantly family-owned. The Belgian national previously held various country, regional and global management positions at Sanofi since 1995, last as Executive Vice President Global Diabetes and Cardiovascular. 

Matthias Heinzel will join the Executive Board of Merck effective April 1, 2021, at the latest. He will assume board responsibility for the Life Science business sector and will be located in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Darmstadt, Germany. Heinzel is currently President Nutrition & Biosciences at DuPont and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a member of DuPont’s Executive Board. Prior to that, he held various global executive positions at DuPont in the U.S. and Germany since 2003.