Amgen Names David Meline CFO - Update

(RTTNews) - Biotechnology giant Amgen Inc (AMGN), Monday named David Meline as executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective July 21.

Meline, who has vast experience in the manufacturing and auto sectors, replaces Michael Kelly, who has been acting CFO since January, when Jonathan Peacock resigned.

Meline recently served as CFO at 3M Co and prior to that served General Motors for more than two decades.

Meline steps in at a time when Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen is striving to boost its pipeline and enter new markets. Amgen posted revenue of about $18.7 billion in 2013. In April, the company reported first quarter revenue of $4.52 billion and net earnings of $1.07 billion.

Commenting on the appointment, Amgen Chief Executive Robert Bradway said, "David's leadership talent and broad international experience will be invaluable to Amgen as we execute our strategy for long-term growth and bring our pipeline of medicines toward commercialization in a number of new markets."

Amgen's key products include white blood cell boosters Neulasta and Neupogen. But the company of late has been seeing increased sales of relatively new drugs and smaller products such as Xgeva, for the prevention of skeletal related events, and Prolia, for postmenopausal osteoporosis.

Amgen stock closed Monday at $116.40, down $1.42 or 1.21%, on a volume of 2.3 million shares on the Nasdaq.