Novartis: change at the top Daniel Vasella has not even left the building yet but the chatter about the new Novartis is already under way. The chairman of the Swiss pharmaceutical group announced his departure on Wednesday, coinciding with the 2012 results. Having been present at the creation - he was chief executive of Sandoz when it merged with Ciba-Geigy in 1996 to create Europe's biggest pharma group by sales - and its driving force ever since, it is clearly a moment. It raises two intriguing questions. Does a post-Vasella Novartis need to change? And, if it does, how should it change? The answer to the first is easy - yes. From certain angles, Novartis looks more like a conglomerate than a pharma company. The purchase of US eyecare group Alcon for $50bn in 2010 added to that perception. Of its five divisions, just under 20 per cent of sales now come from eyecare, with just over half from patented pharma products and another 15 per cent from its Sandoz generic drugs business. That looks a bit lopsided, though it is partly a result of the patent cliff. Novartis will lose up to $3.5bn of patented revenue this year after $2bn in 2012. Revenue from Diovan, its blockbuster hypertension drug, fell 22 per cent in 2012 as patents expired, for example. The same fate almost certainly awaits Glivec, its cancer drug, after its patents begin to expire in 2015. Moreover, group revenue of $57bn for 2012 was flat on 2011 and is unlikely to grow this year, either. Chief executive Joseph Jimenez and new chairman Jörg Reinhardt (who is returning to Novartis from Bayer) have an opportunity now to sort this out. Novartis is financially strong - free cash flow in 2012 of more than $11bn and little debt. But the Vasella-era buying spree has to be bedded in, and a 33 per cent stake in Roche, dating from 2001 and accounting for a third of Novartis" SFr170bn market capitalisation, remains a question mark. The 4 per cent rise in its shares anticipates more change than is perhaps warranted. But after two decades of growth, Mr Jimenez should give Novartis an overdue check-up.