LSIPR 50 2016: Giles Platford and Pardis Sabeti
Name: Giles Platford
Organisation: Takeda
Position: President, emerging markets business unit
Giles Platford has worked at Takeda since 2009 and is president of the emerging markets business unit. He has held a number of roles within the company including head of commercial operations and has headed the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region.
Platford holds a BA honours degree in business and marketing management from Oxford Brookes University in England.
During his time at Takeda, he has worked in Brazil where he successfully helped the company’s commercial performance as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions. One of these successful mergers was with Multilab, a branded generics and over-the-counter (OTC) products company in Brazil, which helped position Takeda as one of the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the country.
In 2014, Takeda announced that Platford had been promoted to head of emerging markets. It also revealed that its commercial goal was to adopt a flexible and targeted approach for each individual market, combining innovative, well-established, branded generics and over-the-counter products.
Emerging markets are expected to contribute 70% of total global pharmaceutical market growth between 2013 and 2017, according to IMS Health.
In February 2015, Takeda announced that it had opened offices in Singapore. The office is based in Biopolis, a biomedical complex, and houses its emerging markets business unit, the vaccine business unit and the regional research and development center.
The vaccine business unit is a laboratory for analytics and development of vaccines to protect against infectious diseases in the region. One vaccine targets dengue fever.
Platford said: “This move in Singapore places us to further strengthen Takeda’s commercial position and clinical development capabilities globally.
“Our new space in Singapore will allow us to more quickly address evolving market needs throughout the rapidly growing emerging markets, including Asia-Pacific.
“It gives us close-to-door access to important market information that will help accelerate the development of medicines needed for battling regional and global health issues,” he added.
