From financial services to biotechnology: A career journey

From law school graduation in 1978 until 1996, Robert W. Hesslein practiced as a general corporate lawyer, specializing in direct equity and debt financings. Today, he is vice president and deputy general counsel of Genzyme Corporation.

He recently took time to discuss how he made such a dramatic career switch, and how his career at Genzyme has evolved over the last 10 years.

Q.: Bob, how did you get to Genzyme?

Hesslein: In 1995, The New England, where I was an investment lawyer managing a 12-person staff, agreed to merge with MetLife. I decided to look for a new position in Boston. Several of my former partners from Csaplar & Bok worked with Peter Wirth, who was splitting his time between Genzyme, as general counsel, and Palmer & Dodge, as a corporate partner. Genzyme had about five or six in-house patent attorneys, and one of Peter’s objectives was to build a corporate in-house group. Although I knew little about the biotech industry and Genzyme, Peter saw value in my general corporate and management expertise.

Q.: So why did you take the position?

Hesslein: I could stay in the Boston area, and try the Cambridge side of the Charles River. I liked Peter. The people at Genzyme were incredibly enthusiastic. And the opportunity to help build a department – something I had enjoyed doing previously – was exciting. Candidly, becoming a biotech lawyer offered little cache at the time. In 1996, Boston was all about Route 128 and high tech. The dot.com boom was in full swing, and high tech lawyers were rock stars. The buzz was not in our sector. Hard to believe, but during 1996-2000 we had to convince talented lawyers to think about biotech since so much money was being made in the dot.com frenzy. With the dot.com crash in 2000, balance was restored. Today, attracting lawyers to life sciences is not an issue.

Q.: Any problems adapting to such a different industry?

Hesslein: Corporate practice in the life sciences is basically no different. But the industry specific elements of my new practice were a challenge. There is no denying that the learning curve was steep. One embarrassing incident – which still gets told today in the company – really illustrates how challenging it was.

One Friday afternoon, three months after I started, we received an FDA warning about possible safety concerns for a substance supplied to us by a third party and used in the delivery of Ceredase®, a life saving drug we manufactured and sold at that time. Ceredase was critical to the company’s success, representing substantially all of our revenues. I met with the other corporate lawyer and a senior officer in regulatory affairs. Ceredase itself was safe. But lacking information about the delivery intermediate and wanting to be prudent with our product, we instructed our Allston manufacturing facility to hold shipments of Ceredase over the weekend. This caused a major to-do. As I quickly learned, in the biotech world any suggestion of a safety problem can cause concern with physicians, create enormous regulatory issues, disrupt distribution and send investors running for the door.

Come Monday morning, senior operations people and our president were, shall I say, disturbed. They wanted to know who had suggested the shipment hold. People claimed it was Hazeltine – they meant Hesslein – but I was so new only a few knew me. Believe me, I wasn’t too quick to correct the misidentification. So early on I got a very good lesson about product safety in the pharmaceutical industry … which is a bit different from product safety in the insurance world.

Q.: How did you learn the business?

Hesslein: I knew very little at the start about the FDA approval process, the Orphan Drug Act, biotech licensing, clinical trials, reimbursement, drug promotion and distribution, not to mention the underlying science. I am convinced that drug development and sales is the most difficult business in the world. The mystery (at least to me) of the basic and applied science, the complexities of clinical trials and medical practice, the long product life cycle, the breadth of FDA regulation, and of course the exorbitant levels of financial and corporate risk, makes you wonder how any product reaches the market. You invest significant financial and intellectual capital, the payoff is usually 10-15 years down the road and the success rate is extremely low. But I learned the biotech business from some very patient Genzyme scientists and business people, and from a number of great Genzyme lawyers and outside lawyers.

Q.: How has the company changed over the past ten years?

Hesslein: The company has grown from a $300 million company with 2,000 employees to a $3 billion company with 8,500 employees. We have also extended our reach around the world. While we have always been an international company – the genesis of our company included a British diagnostics company, and our CEO Henri Termeer is Dutch – sales have increased from nearly zero internationally to over 50 per cent of total sales.

Q.: Why such an international focus?

Hesslein: Senior management’s horizons have always been global. Plus, Genzyme’s business strategy has been to focus on developing drugs for small patient populations. To reach the largest number of patients with rare diseases, sales need to be worldwide.

Q.: How has this international focus affected you?

Hesslein: It means at 7 a.m. I already have 10-20 e-mails from Europe, and during my in-bound commute I’m on the phone with Europe. In the evening – between 9 and 11 p.m., I’m on the telephone to Asia. Sunday night at 10 p.m. the workday is already in full swing in Asia, so my weekends are cut short. But it’s exciting.

Q.: How has the company’s growth affected your job?

Hesslein: Substantively, my job has changed frequently as specialization occurred, new lawyers were hired and business unit responsibilities were rotated. That’s been invigorating. With over 40 in-house lawyers, seven of whom work abroad, I am doing more managing and less legal work. While we are highly rated in terms of client satisfaction within the company, all the lawyers worry about getting too large, losing our sense of togetherness, and becoming less connected with our clients.

Q.: What is it like to try to hire lawyers in foreign jurisdictions?

Hesslein: Recruiting foreign lawyers is a challenge. For example, earlier this month I visited China for meetings and to recruit. We seek lawyers from a variety of sources, and rely on search firms, country managers and outside counsel to help evaluate candidates. You need to be careful not to draw conclusions based on interviews and resumes alone. English is often the candidate’s second language. And schools, careers and life experience are often different from what we are used to in the United States.