BrazilBCG Denmark partner Tommi Kainu appointed to Board of Bavarian Nordic
After nearly two decades at the Boston Consulting Group, Tommi Kainu has joined Bavarian Nordic, a biotechnology company headquartered in Denmark.
Bavarian Nordic is an biotechnology company that develops and manufactures cancer immunotherapies and vaccines for infectious diseases such as ebola and fever. The organisation has around 450 employees, based across offices in Kvistgaard, Denmark (a town in Helsingør Municipality), where it also operates a commercial-scale manufacturing facility; Martinsried, Germany, where it has a research and development facility, and; Morrisville, North Carolina, its hub for the North American market.
Having been led by a three-member board for a number of years, the company’s CEO, Paul Chaplin, has decided to enlarge the top organ in a bid to capitalise on new growth opportunities. New to the board is the Finnish national Tommi Kainu (44), who previously worked for seventeen years for The Boston Consulting Group – a US origin strategic consultancy firm with over 14,000 employees globally and one of the three most prestigious players in the consulting industry.
Most recently, Kainu served as a Partner and Managing Director since 2011. While at BCG, Kainu led the firm’s Strategy and Health Care practices for the Nordics, and gained extensive experience working with major global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on projects including government relations, product launches, portfolio strategy and business development. Prior to the consulting firm, Kainu worked at the National Institutes of Health (USA) in the Cancer Genetics Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
At Bavarian Nordic, Kainu, who obtained his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Tampere Medical School in Tampere, Finland, has been appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer, effective July 1, 2017. In the newly created position, based in the company's headquarters in Denmark, he will be responsible for both commercial and governmental affairs, as well as business development.
“Tommi is the ideal candidate to join Bavarian Nordic at this time. Managing a portfolio as large and diverse as ours, with multiple partners across pharma and government, requires an individual with an exceptional knowledge of the commercial landscape, as well as the scientific capabilities of our platform, Tommi has all these qualities. I welcome him and am very excited to have his expertise as part of our team,” said Bavarian Nordic’s CEO Paul Chaplin.
In another senior move in the Nordics involving a (former) BCG consultant, Henning Karlsrud, who worked for the US strategy firm between 2000 and 2004, has taken the position of CFO for Ice Group, one of Norway’s challenger telecom companies.
Related: Consulting industry of Nordics expands to €2.8 billion.
