April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Genentech Inc., the biotechnology company bought by Roche Holding AG for $46.8 billion, lost its chief financial officer, head of product development and compliance manager after the Swiss drugmaker named a new chief executive officer for the unit.

Pascal Soriot, 49, who now heads Roche’s commercial pharmaceutical operations, will become Genentech’s CEO, responsible for all U.S. pharmaceutical operations, beginning May 1. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, 51, the product development leader who has been a Genentech executive since 1995, will leave at mid-year and join the Genentech Scientific Resource Board, Roche said in a statement yesterday.

The changes begin the company’s transformation to a team- oriented culture from one that supports individual scientific enterprise, said Stephen Burrill, a venture capitalist who invests in biotechnology companies. Soriot will succeed current Genentech’s Arthur Levinson, 59, who will stay on as chairman. Roche officials also will take over from the other departing executives, the company said.

“By and large, the Genentech leadership will move on, staying as long as their golden handcuffs require them to,” Burrill said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The spirit of entrepreneurship won’t be the same. People who were excited by entrepreneurship will find new homes and those that are comfortable with a large corporate structure will stay.”

Roche rose 1 Swiss franc, or less than 1 percent, to 149.7 francs at the close of Zurich trading.

Retention Bonuses

Roche, which already owned 56 percent of Genentech, completed in March the $46.8 billion purchase of the remaining 44 percent. Genentech employees become eligible to receive retention bonuses July 1 under a program approved in August.

Genentech was founded in 1976 by Herbert Boyer, a genetic engineering researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and Robert Swanson, then a 29-year-old venture capitalist. Boyer and Stanley Cohen, a researcher at Stanford University near Palo Alto, California, pioneered the technique that allows scientists to insert genes from one organism into another, laying the foundations for antibody-based drugs, bioengineered crops and gene therapy.

In the ensuing decades, South San Francisco, California- based Genentech made the first human protein by splicing genes into E. coli bacteria and later synthesized human insulin and human growth hormone. The company went public in 1980 in an initial offering that raised $35 million, and saw the share price rise to $88 from $35 in less than an hour.

20-Year Stake

Basel, Switzerland-based Roche, the world’s largest drugmaker by market value, held a stake in South San Francisco, California-based Genentech for almost 20 years and controlled 56 percent of the biotechnology company’s shares before starting its acquisition bid in July. Roche sought the takeover to boost income from top-selling cancer medicines such as Avastin. Roche completed the transaction on March 26.

“It is a sad day for me and many others,” Myrtle Potter, former president of commercial operations at Genentech, said in an e-mail. Potter left the company in 2005.

Levinson will also be nominated for a seat on Roche’s board at the company’s next shareholder meeting in 2010, according to the Roche statement.

Soriot joined Roche in 2006 and was previously a U.S.-based executive with Sanofi-Aventis SA, the Paris-based drugmaker, said Geoff Teeter, a Genentech spokesman.

$4.59 Million Bonus

Desmond-Hellman, by staying until June 30, will be eligible for a retention bonus of $4.59 million, Genentech said in an Aug. 21 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. David A. Ebersman, the departing executive vice president and the lead financial officer, may receive $2.73 million under the retention plan, according to the filing.

Desmond-Hellman’s departure is “symbolic,” Burrill said. “She’s a hot rock and will be very desired by a lot of other companies to take a leadership position.”

Roche also said the head of it drug-making unit, Bill Burns, 61, will retire from the Swiss company’s corporate executive committee in January. Burns, along with Levinson, will be proposed as a Roche board member at the next annual general meeting, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said.

Departures from Genentech have been expected, according to analysts.

“We question whether the key contributors to the company’s impressive history of innovation will stay with the merged entity,” wrote Geoff Porges, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, in a March 16 note to investors.

While bonus programs and promotions may keep some Genentech managers “engaged for a period of time,” the company’s “unique culture, structure and style is likely to be eroded over time,” Porges said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 15, 2009 16:39 EDT