Shin Yoo-yeol (39), the eldest son of Shin Dong-bin, chairman of LOTTE Group, has been named CEO of LOTTE Biologics. As a third-generation member of the owner family takes the helm as co-chief, there is speculation that LOTTE Group will put more weight behind its bio business.
LOTTE said on the 26th that Shin Yoo-yeol, head of future growth at LOTTE Corporation and head of global strategy at LOTTE Biologics (executive vice president), has been named CEO of LOTTE Biologics. He was not promoted in this personnel move.
According to LOTTE Group, while Shin co-leads the bio business, he will also take on a key role in a newly established strategy control organization at LOTTE Corporation to spearhead companywide business innovation and a shift in the business portfolio. Shin has concurrently served as head of global strategy at LOTTE Biologics since 2023 and was promoted to executive vice president at the end of November last year in the regular executive reshuffle.
With this personnel move, LOTTE Biologics will shift to a "co-CEO" structure. Before this, there was a leadership change at the end of last year.
After leading the business since LOTTE Biologics launched in June 2022, former CEO Lee Won-jik resigned at the end of November last year, and then in January this year, CEO Park James (president) officially took office. Park previously worked at global pharmaceutical companies Merck in Germany and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in the United States, and served as a vice president at Samsung Biologics and CEO at GC Cell.
Since then, Shin has appeared alongside CEO Park James at major global pharma-bio events, including the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference hosted by the global investment bank JP Morgan, the BIO International Convention (BIO USA) hosted by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization in the United States, and BioJapan, stepping up activities. At the time, Park said, "Executive Vice President Shin is directly taking part in business and partnership meetings with global pharmaceutical companies and potential clients."
Within the industry, some had viewed that once LOTTE Biologics posted concrete business results, Shin would step to the forefront of management. As a latecomer in the biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business, it takes time, by nature of the business, to secure global clients and win contracts.
In fact, this year LOTTE Biologics officially announced contract wins for the first time in the four years since the company's launch. The company said it has signed a total of three contracts to date. Starting in April with a contract to produce an ADC clinical trial candidate for a bio company based in Asia, in June it signed a CMO contract for a bispecific antibody drug candidate with OTTIMO Pharma in the United Kingdom, and in September it signed a contract with a U.S. bio company.
Expanding business results is the main task. The company has yet to win any contract manufacturing orders for commercial-stage drugs, which are key to increasing revenue. Although it has made large-scale investments, including acquiring BMS's plant in Syracuse, New York, in 2022 and breaking ground in March last year on Plant 1 at the Songdo Bio Campus in Incheon, it has not yet established a stable profit structure.
Against this backdrop, there is also an outlook that under the co-CEO structure LOTTE Biologics could push more aggressive sales activities and a drive to recruit experts. A LOTTE Biologics official said, "CEO Shin will lead LOTTE Biologics' business together with CEO Park James."