Name: Andrew Hider
New role: CEO, Baxter
Previous role: CEO, ATS Corporation
Baxter has appointed Andrew Hider as president and CEO, filling a vacancy created by the retirement of José Almeida in February.
Hider is currently CEO of the automation company ATS Corporation. ATS works across a wide range of industries, with life sciences being the largest of many end markets. Baxter drew parallels between the businesses because ATS is “a global, diversified, customer-centric company with a broad scale and range of capabilities.” ATS has more than 65 manufacturing facilities.
Baxter CFO Joel Grade discussed what the company was looking for in a CEO at a Goldman Sachs event in June. Grade said the target profile of the CEO would reflect Baxter’s focus on its growth rate.
“We’re looking to accelerate growth over what we have had historically. We talked about this 4% to 5% growth target, and that obviously is going to come in part from innovation and from the opportunity to drive R&D investment in those areas that are going to drive growth,” Grade said. “I think that's certainly part of the profile.”
Acquisitions, “in a fold-in, tuck-in way,” form part of Baxter’s growth plans, Grade said. Hider oversaw a series of tuck-in acquisitions as CEO of ATS. Deals such as the $195 million takeover of Avidity Science and the acquisition of Paxiom for $146 million Canadian dollars, plus a string of smaller buyouts, helped drive revenue growth at ATS under Hider’s leadership.
Hider is set to start as CEO of Baxter by Sept. 3. The timing of the executive’s departure from ATS is yet to be finalized. Hider is expected to leave ATS by the end of August on a date still to be determined by the company’s board of directors. Almeida is scheduled to stay on with the company in an advisory role until Oct. 31.
