Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Chris Viehbacher, passed over for the top job at GlaxoSmithKline Plc, gets his chance to run a European drugmaker today when he takes the reins at Sanofi-Aventis SA, the worst-performing stock among Europe’s largest pharmaceutical companies this year.

Viehbacher takes over from scientist Gerard le Fur, who was ousted in September after setbacks with the Acomplia obesity pill and the Plavix blood thinner. The 48-year-old manager until September ran the North American pharmaceutical business at Glaxo, Sanofi’s U.K. rival.

Sanofi, based in Paris, lags behind its peers in cutting costs and introducing products to replace big-sellers that face generic competition. Viehbacher, credited with uniting Glaxo’s North American operations after a merger eight years ago, has a temperament and skills well suited for the job of revving up Sanofi’s performance, says Robert A. Ingram, the CEO’s former mentor at London-based Glaxo.

“He really created a unified culture,” said Ingram, 65, who was Viehbacher’s chief operating officer when they worked to integrate the 2000 merger of Glaxo Wellcome Plc and SmithKline Beecham Plc. “You can have brilliant strategies, but it always comes down to the people and the talent,” he said.

Viehbacher, a French speaker with dual Canadian and German citizenship, stepped down from his previous post on Sept. 8, after being passed over for the top job when Glaxo CEO Jean- Pierre Garnier retired. Viehbacher, through Sanofi spokespeople, declined to be interviewed for this story.

French Speaker

The executive once managed French operations during his 20- year career at Glaxo, and spent 9 years living in France. Viehbacher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, Alison, and their three children.

During efforts to better integrate Glaxo sites in Philadelphia and at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, he instituted quarterly meetings in which employees could talk about the business over Krispy Kreme donuts, so chosen because they invoked the name Chris.

His task at Sanofi will be to spur new growth at a company whose problems may have begun four years ago during a protracted takeover of Aventis SA by its smaller French rival Sanofi- Synthelabo SA, says Mirabaud Pereire Holdings Ltd. analyst Nick Turner, who is based in London. Sanofi-Synthelabo won the contest after Switzerland’s Novartis AG decided against a bid because the French government favored the creation of a so-called national champion.

Untouchable

Aventis, France’s largest drugmaker at the time, was itself the product of a previous merger of Germany’s Hoechst AG and France’s Rhone-Poulenc SA. All Sanofi’s top managers come from Sanofi-Synthelabo.

“The fact that you’re bringing a non-French manager with no axe to grind from either the Sanofi or Aventis side shows there is a change of attitude,” said Marc Booty, a London-based senior investment manager at Pictet Asset Management Ltd., which oversees more than $150 billion, including Sanofi shares.

“A lot of areas were perceived to be untouchable within the group,” Booty said. The management change “should create a shift in investor sentiment -- that it’s no longer going to be run as a national treasure but could be run as a lean and mean corporate.”

Sanofi’s biggest failure was Acomplia, the obesity pill Chairman Jean-Francois Dehecq once predicted would generate more than $3 billion in annual sales. The French drugmaker last month halted all human trials of the drug after European health authorities said psychiatric side effects made the medicine too dangerous for use.

Biggest Failure

Sanofi had pressed ahead with tests on thousands of patients, hoping to win approval as a diabetes treatment, even after a U.S. panel last year rejected the medicine because of risks including depression and suicide. Sanofi’s shares have fallen more than 30 percent since the setback and are down about 31 percent this year.

Sales at the company have slipped for four consecutive quarters. Last week, U.S. regulators scheduled a March 18 hearing on the Multaq heart drug, delaying Sanofi’s plan to start selling the medicine in the world’s biggest pharmaceutical market in the first quarter.

Sanofi fell 39 euro cents, or 0.9 percent, to 43.06 euros in Paris trading. The stock has declined about 32 percent this year.

Known for being outspoken, Viehbacher this year railed against Massachusetts after the U.S. state proposed a ban on gifts to doctors. He then led industry efforts to craft voluntary guidelines to curb such practices as a board member of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The trade association, also known as PhRMA, announced the revised marketing code in July.

Difficult Conversations

“Those were difficult conversations,” said PhRMA president Billy Tauzin, 65, a former Republican representative from Louisiana. “It took young, aggressive, forward-thinking leaders like Chris to talk to companies who resisted change. He’s been so forthright. He made a dramatic difference in a short period of time.”

Viehbacher is also credited with leading Glaxo out of a crisis with the Avandia diabetes drug that lost sales after a report of heart risks last year. He was the public face of Glaxo in an ensuing debate over Avandia’s safety, doing media interviews and speaking at regulatory hearings.

After the setback, Viehbacher masterminded Glaxo’s $1.65 billion purchase of Reliant Pharmaceuticals Inc. to gain the heart medicine Lovaza. He also led U.S. expansion of the company’s vaccine and oncology businesses. In February last year, he initiated a licensing deal valued as high as $640 million with U.S. biotechnology company XenoPort Inc. to get an experimental treatment for restless legs syndrome.

Looking Outside

“Chris recognized that no matter how big our R&D business is, we still needed to look outside our four walls,” Ingram said, referring to research and development.

At Sanofi, he will serve under Dehecq, who has steered the French drugmaker through dozens of acquisitions over more than three decades.

“I’m not so sure it’s that common for a miracle worker to come in and turn a company around,” Mirabaud’s Turner said. “The flexibility he might have for a wide-ranging restructuring plan is a bit limited. Sanofi has been too parochial for too long.”

Meeting Analysts

Since departing Glaxo, Viehbacher has met with analysts and sales teams from at least one major investment bank to hear their views and concerns about Sanofi. Analysts at Morgan Stanley last week upgraded the French drugmaker to “overweight” from “equal weight” in anticipation of more cost-cutting at the company.

“Sanofi-Aventis is well known for keeping drugs in the pipeline until the last minute,” Natixis analysts including Philippe Lanone wrote in a note to investors in September. The strategy, which has been “very negative in the vast majority of cases,” has helped make the company the fourth-highest spender on research and development among major global pharmaceutical companies, he wrote.

“Productivity could be improved both by discontinuing some ongoing projects but also by making organization changes and rationalizing costs,” Paris-based Lanone wrote in the report. For example, Sanofi has said that it has 30 R&D sites, which according to Lanone is more than double that of its peers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Trista Kelley in London at tkelley2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 1, 2008 11:44 EST