Interim Illumina CFO takes permanent seat

Dive Brief:

Illumina Inc.’s Joydeep Goswami will move from his current position as interim CFO to holding the seat on a permanent basis, effective immediately, the company announced on Wednesday
Goswami took the financial helm of the gene sequencing company on an interim basis back in June when the previous CFO, Sam Samad, left his post after more than five years to take on another CFO role at Quest Diagnostics, a New Jersey-based medical testing company.
This will be the newly minted chief’s first finance position of the sort — having no background in executive financial management. He came to Illumina as its chief strategy and corporate development officer back in 2019.

Dive Insight:

Before joining the San Diego-based company, Goswami was at Thermo Fisher Scientific for all of six years, holding positions of vice president, protein and cell analytics, and president, clinical next generation sequencing and oncology, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Goswami is taking the top finance seat on a permanent basis after some turbulent past couple months for the gene sequencing company.

In September, Illumina’s $7.1 billion acquisition Grail Inc. — a cancer test developer — was blocked by the European Commission due to concerns over whether or not the deal would halt innovation and reduce customer choice in an emerging market for early cancer-detection blood tests, according to the bloc’s antitrust regulators.

The outcome could establish new precedents for mergers-and-acquisition oversight as Grail’s tests are relatively new and have generated little revenue so far — and none in the EU, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

Now, the life science tools developer may be facing a fine of 10% of its annual turnover to the EU as a penalty for closing the acquisition without receiving antitrust clearance, according to a report by Seeking Alpha.

The company reported a $3.82 billion loss for the quarter ending Oct. 2 largely due to the Grail acquisition, according to its third quarter earnings report.

Meanwhile, Illumina’s biggest customer base of clinical laboratories are tightening their belts and scaling back on demand as Illumina faces creeping competition from startups like Ultima Genomics Inc., according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.