Emma Natasha Walmsley was born in June 1969 in Barrow-in-Furness in what was then Lancashire, now Cumbria. She is the daughter of Sir Robert Walmsley and Lady Christina Walmsley. Sir Robert was Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy and served as Chief of Defence Procurement at the UK Ministry of Defence from 1996 to 2003, under both John Major and Tony Blair.
Emma was a boarder at St Swithun’s School, Winchester. She subsequently studied Classics and Modern Languages at Christ Church College, Oxford, gaining an MA. Outside work, it is said Walmsley enjoys yoga. She married David Owen in September 1995 in London, and they have four children.
Upon leaving university, Walmsley worked at the French cosmetic company L’Oréal for 17 years, where she held various general management and marketing roles in Paris, London and New York. The roles included being General Manager of Garnier-Maybelline.
In 2007 she moved to Shanghai as General Manager, Consumer Products for L’Oreal China, where she ran the company’s Chinese consumer products business, overseeing global brands including L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier, as well as Mininurse, a Chinese skincare brand.
Given her rise at L’Oreal, industry insiders expressed surprise when, in 2010, she moved to GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK plc). Many felt she had not finished her ascent at her previous company and were tipping her for one of the most senior global management roles.
She entered GlaxoSmithKline in May 2010 as President of Consumer Healthcare Europe, rising in October 2011 to head its global consumer healthcare division as President of Consumer Healthcare Worldwide and a member of the executive team.
In March 2015, she became the chief executive officer of Consumer Healthcare. Walmsley was particularly involved in promoting GSK’s greater territorial reach in emerging markets. Under her leadership, the consumer products division, one of the world’s largest consumer health groups with brands including Panadol, Voltaren and Horlicks, made up nearly a quarter of GlaxoSmithKline’s revenues.
She was also a non-executive director at international drinks and hospitality giant Diageo until September 2016. In September 2019, Walmsley joined the Microsoft board as an independent director.
She took over as CEO of GSK in April 2017, a role she still holds, succeeding Sir Andrew Witty, who had retired the month before. It made her the first woman to run a major pharmaceutical company. At the time, analysts commented that Walmsley’s appointment could be seen as a signal that GSK would keep its consumer operation as a core part of its business.
Early in her tenure, in August 2017, Walmsley stated that her priority was for GlaxoSmithKline to become more adept at developing and commercialising new drugs. She announced a slimmed-down set of priorities for drug development, setting a target of allocating 80% of pharma R&D capital to a maximum of four disease areas.
This led to some concern among commentators that the decision to hold its dividend would limit the amount available for R&D and acquiring intellectual property from other companies.
In January 2018, it was reported that Walmsley had replaced 50 of GSK’s top managers across the company’s businesses and created a number of new roles in their place. Among the new hirees was Karenann Terrell, who joined the company as Chief Digital and Technology Officer from Walmart.
In the first annual results since it spun off its consumer healthcare business Haleon in July 2022, GSK reported a pre-tax profit of £6.1bn for 2023, up by 14%. Turnover rose by 5% to £30.3bn, also boosted by steady demand for its shingles shot and HIV medicines.
Leadership style
A Financial Times profile of Walmsley in 2016 reported that colleagues describe her as a ‘strong and dynamic’ (hence this magazine’s title) leader who mixes a personable style with a ‘steely’ focus. She inspires those around her with her work ethic.
“She sets clear objectives, and there are lots of KPIs [key performance indicators] to measure delivery,” said one. She is renowned for her combination of empathy and attention to performance, paying close attention to talent development whilst being “ruthless with underperformers”.
Honours
Dame Emma Wlmsley has some considerable international standing. Various business magazines have placed her high up in their annual rankings of the world’s most powerful women.
She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the pharmaceutical industry and business.
In 2024, she ranked as the fourth-highest woman in Fortune Magazine’s list of ‘100 Most Powerful People’, up from seventh the previous year, and a list she found herself top of in 2018, and second in 2017 and 2019. One has to stay moving in order to remain at the top.
Meanwhile, Walmsley ranked 14th in the Forbes list of “World’s 100 most powerful women”, one place higher than the previous year, and once again the highest-placed Briton.
Rewards
In May 2024, it was announced that Walmsley’s annual pay package jumped by over 50% to £12.7m, mainly due to a higher share bonus payout reflecting the British drugmaker’s improved performance and a 51% increase from her previous year’s remuneration. It made her the second-highest-paid CEO of a European pharmaceutical company.
The huge pay rise made her one of the highest-paid executives in the FTSE 100 index of leading shares, a week after it emerged that her counterpart at Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, received a £16.9m pay package. She is certainly the highest-paid among the 10 female FTSE 100 chief executives.
While her combined pay was at £12m, her fixed pay – comprised of salary, benefits and pension – fell slightly to £1.6m, while her annual cash bonus increased to £3.8m from £3.1m, according to GSK’s annual report.
The final tally is achieved by also receiving £7.3m from performance-based long-term share awards, compared with a £3.7m payout the year before, as a higher proportion of share awards vested last year and at a higher share price, increasing their value.
In its annual report, the company said: “Emma Walmsley’s remuneration for 2023 reflected excellent and sustained delivery against stretching performance targets, aligned to shareholder interests and value creation.
“This includes the company’s performance last year, where GSK delivered very strong sales, operating profit and earnings per share growth, and continued pipeline progress, including the blockbuster launch of our new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, Arexvy.”
GSK’s Arexvy jab was the first vaccine approved (in summer 2023) against RSV in older adults, which causes thousands of deaths and hospitalisations in the UK each year, more than influenza. The RSV vaccine, launched in the summer, has already become a blockbuster (defined as a drug with at least $1bn annual sales), racking up £1.2bn sales in four months.
Risk
For more than two years, GSK has been in litigation in the US over Zantac, the heartburn drug that powered the rise of old Glaxo in the 1980s and 90s. The latest setback from GSK’s point of view was a ruling from a Delaware judge in June 2024 that allowed plaintiffs, who claim that the drug is linked to their cancers, to take their case to jury trial.
Until then, investors had gradually been becoming more confident that GSK and the other pharma companies that sold and marketed the drug (all of whom dispute the links to cancer) would contain liabilities and legal costs to easily absorb sums. But Delaware represents the vast bulk of Zantac cases; it is a huge case none of them are going to be able to ignore.
An additional ruling in 2024, which was also unhelpful to GSK, was the decision by US health officials to narrow the age range for the use of new vaccines for the aforementioned Arexvy. That unexpected move knocked a pound off the share price at the time. It also gave the market an opportunity to criticise GSK’s overall improvement. Vaccines – the sector investors were interested in – were forecast to have lower growth in sales this year because of the RSV ruling setback.
But this all feels like an overly gloomy way to view the new-style GSK, and some cynics may consider it a personal attack on Walmsley herself. A British pharmaceutical company doing well in the US? And led by a woman? Whatever next?
Legal clarity probably will not emerge until well into 2025, so it is perfectly possible that the stock market will continue to take the view that there are just too many uncertainties at GSK. But the performance on the ground and in the labs appears genuinely to have turned a corner.
GSK is not alone in the pharmaceutical sector in upgrading forecasts, but there is (finally) a glimpse of momentum there. And an upgrade is an upgrade, as they say, and that has all been achieved on Dame Emma Walmsley’s watch.
