Input 2020.12.31 15:00
According to Celltrion Group on the 31st, Chairman Seo Jeong-jin will withdraw from the front line of management at the end of the day as announced. It is said that there are no separate events as well as the retirement ceremony. It is said that there was no notice to the executives and employees. The successor will be decided at the general shareholders’ meeting to be held in March next year.
Celltrion Group is estimated to exceed 1 trillion won in operating profit for the first time since its establishment this year. This is an achievement that started with six people, including Chairman Seo, who graduated from the Department of Industrial Engineering, and no one majoring in biotechnology or pharmacy. The market cap of the three Celltrion members, including Celltrion, Celltrion Healthcare, and Celltrion Pharmaceutical, is close to 82 trillion won.
Chairman Seo founded Celltrion in 2002. After starting his first work life at Samsung Electro-Mechanics in 1983, Kim Woo-jung caught the eyes of former Daewoo Group chairman and served as a planning and financial advisor for Daewoo Motors. He was also entitled to be the youngest Daewoo Motors executive in his mid-30s, but became unemployed in 1999 when Daewoo Group was disbanded due to the IMF crisis. In 2000, with colleagues who were unemployed, they made Nexol, the predecessor of Celltrion, and started the generic drug business. This is because if the patent for an expensive drug is released, it is possible to make a generic drug and sell it cheaply to make a profit. After visiting Genentech in the United States and suggesting technology transfer several times, Genentech’s subsidiary Bexgen transferred the AIDS vaccine technology being developed to establish Celltrion.
In 2003, it started to establish a production plant in Songdo, Incheon. It is known that he has collected investment money here and there and even used debentures. In 2004, a year before completion, the news that the phase 3 clinical trial of Bexgen’s AIDS vaccine failed. It’s like being driven into a bankruptcy crisis.
The establishment of the factory continued. There was no medicine to make in the market, but as the establishment of the factory continued, a glance of doubt came out. Criticism has also emerged as to whether it is a’scammer’.
In March 2005, the factory that Seo had pushed was completed. In June of the same year, Celltrion announced that it had signed a consignment production (CMO) for Orencia, a rheumatoid arthritis treatment, with BMS (Bristol Myers Squibb) in the United States. The CMO business continued for the next five years. The plant was also the first in Asia to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It was solid.
In 2009, Chairman Seo stopped CMO of BMS and challenged biosimilars. It bought Hanseo Pharmaceutical, a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, and launched Celltrion Pharmaceutical. We focused on research on antibody biosimilar’Remsima’. It was also the starting point of short selling and’bad luck’, but it was approved by Remsima in Europe. Soon after, biosimilars such as Hezuma and Truxima succeeded one after another.
As Celltrion, Chairman Seo’s final goal is to develop an antibody treatment for COVID-19. It has completed phase 2 of global clinical trials and has submitted an application for conditional approval to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety plans to complete the approval and examination within 40 days. Celltrion has already finished producing treatments for 100,000 people.
After retirement, Chairman Seo returns to be a startup. At the ‘2020 Healthcare Innovation Forum’ hosted by Chosun Biz and the Korea Health Industry Promotion Agency in November, he said, “I don’t know how many years I will work, but my mental age is the same as young people.” “I said.