Who are Novartis's decision-makers?

Vasant (Vas) Narasimhan has served as CEO of Novartis since February 1, 2018, after being appointed by the Board in September 2017. An MD from Harvard Medical School and MPP from Harvard Kennedy School, Narasimhan joined Novartis from McKinsey in 2005 and rose through roles including Global Head of Novartis Vaccines and Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer before assuming the top role. He was listed among TIME100 Most Influential People in Health in 2025, and in April 2026 was named to the board of Anthropic — added by the company's Long-Term Benefit Trust to bring biopharma expertise to AI safety governance, in a move that gave the Trust majority control of Anthropic's board.

The CFO role transitioned in March 2026: Mukul Mehta became CFO effective March 16, 2026, succeeding Harry Kirsch who retired after a 22-year Novartis career. Mehta is a 20-year Novartis veteran who served as CFO International (including an ad-interim run as President International), CFO of the Pharmaceuticals business unit, and country CFO across France, Poland, and Norway — making him arguably the most thoroughly prepared internal CFO succession in the company's history.

The rest of the ECN is structured around four functional domains: Research (Fiona H. Marshall, President Biomedical Research, leading NIBR); Development (Shreeram Aradhye, President Development and CMO); Commercial (Victor Bulto, President US; Patrick Horber, President International); and Operations (Steffen Lang, President Operations). Karen Hale serves as Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, and Aharon Gal leads Strategy and Business Development, including M&A.

Budget authority at Novartis is distributed across functional and geographic P&L owners. For technology vendors, the primary budget decision-makers are as follows: President Operations (Steffen Lang) controls manufacturing, supply chain, and industrial IoT budgets across 30+ global production sites — a priority target for process analytics, MES, and manufacturing execution vendors. President US (Victor Bulto) controls US commercial technology including CRM, HCP engagement platforms, and field force tools — the key decision-maker for the Salesforce Agentforce Life Sciences rollout and any point solutions in US commercial. CFO (Mukul Mehta) controls finance systems (SAP ERP, SAP Concur) and procurement technology. President Development (Shreeram Aradhye) controls clinical data platforms, AI/ML tools for drug discovery, and regulatory submission systems across NIBR and Development.

Strategic technology partnerships — such as the Salesforce Agentforce Life Sciences deal (December 2025) and the AWS strategic collaboration — are negotiated at the ECN level with CEO and CFO sponsorship and typically require Board-level sign-off given scale. Mid-market SaaS vendors go through formal Novartis Procurement RFP processes with IT Security, Legal, and Compliance involvement. Chief People & Organization Officer (Rob Kowalski) controls HR technology, talent platforms, and learning systems.

Post-October 2023, Novartis operates as a single-segment business — Innovative Medicines — with no separate divisional P&L reporting. Commercial operations split geographically: President US (Victor Bulto) runs the approximately $21B US commercial business, while President International (Patrick Horber, MD, former AbbVie immunology President) covers all markets outside the US, including Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Emerging Markets.

R&D is structured across two functions: Development (clinical trials, regulatory strategy, medical affairs under Aradhye) and Biomedical Research (discovery science at NIBR under Fiona H. Marshall). Manufacturing and supply chain fall under Operations (Steffen Lang), who also oversees the critical scale-up of radioligand therapy production globally — a strategic bottleneck given Pluvicto's strong demand growth of +42% in 2025. This single-segment ECN-anchored structure is designed to accelerate decision-making as Novartis manages 7–9 potential new asset launches expected between 2025 and 2027.