(Bloomberg) -- Roche Holding AG is looking within the company to replace the departing pharma chief amid growing pressure to rejuvenate its portfolio of medicines.

The Swiss drugmaker would prefer an internal candidate to replace Bill Anderson, the pharmaceutical unit chief who departed at year-end, said Chairman Christoph Franz. The company doesn’t run the risk of silo-ed thinking, he said, because there is significant movement of workers at other levels between drugmakers.

“There are always risks when someone comes as a chief who isn’t familiar with the culture of the company,” Franz, who is himself leaving the chairman’s position in March, told journalists in Zurich on Wednesday. “The risk is much less great when it’s someone who’s already been in the company for some time.” 

Family-controlled Roche is reshuffling its top leadership after a series of drug-development disappointments. 

Franz, a relative outsider when he left the top job at Deutsche Lufthansa AG nearly a decade ago to take over as chairman, will make way for longtime Chief Executive Officer Severin Schwan to lead the supervisory board. Schwan is being replaced by Thomas Schinecker, Roche’s diagnostics chief, who has spent his entire career at the company. 

Though the company still has a deep pipeline of experimental drugs, high-profile potential therapies for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease failed in clinical trials last year. Some investors are growing frustrated at the lack of positive data, Jefferies analysts said last week, downgrading their recommendation on the company’s shares to “hold.”

The shares have lost more than 20% in Zurich in the past 12 months. 

Roche is still aiming to replace Anderson by March, Franz said. In the meantime, Schinecker is overseeing the pharmaceutical unit with input from Anderson.

--With assistance from Claudia Maedler.

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