Bristol-Myers Operating Chief to Become CEO in May -- Update

By Josh Beckerman 

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said Giovanni Caforio will succeed Lamberto Andreotti as chief executive in May.

Mr. Andreotti, 64, will become executive chairman in May and will remain chairman after his retirement in August.

Mr. Caforio, 50, joined the company in 2000 and was named chief operating officer last year.

The drug company's current chairman, James M. Cornelius, 71, has chosen not to stand for re-election to the board, the company said.

Mr. Andreotti joined the company in 1998 and became CEO in 2010. Mr. Cornelius joined the board in 2005 and is also a former Bristol-Myers CEO.

Bristol has undergone a dramatic makeover in recent years, shedding businesses that didn't sell prescription drugs and narrowing its pharmaceuticals focus to a few diseases, particularly cancer.

Last week, the company said a late-stage study of its immunotherapy drug Opdivo in lung cancer was ended early because of the treatment's success, lifting shares of the company.

Opdivo, or nivolumab, targets a protein called PD-1, a molecular brake that prevents the immune system from seeing tumors as invaders and enables cancer to avoid attack.

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