In Frank Clyburn's ab­sence, Mer­ck taps sea­soned vet­er­an to run in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Health busi­ness

Frank Clyburn left some big shoes to fill. Mer­ck an­nounced back in Feb­ru­ary that it would take three peo­ple to re­place his role run­ning the com­pa­ny’s hu­man health busi­ness, and tapped the first two ex­ecs from with­in.

For the third, Mer­ck is bring­ing home a sea­soned vet­er­an who spent 25 years at the phar­ma gi­ant be­fore leav­ing for a short stint at the helm of a Chi­nese biotech.

Joseph Ro­manel­li has agreed to lead Mer­ck’s in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Health busi­ness, start­ing Aug. 1, the com­pa­ny an­nounced on Wednes­day. He’ll serve along­side Arpa Garay and Jan­nie Oost­huizen, two for­mer on­col­o­gy ex­ecs who now lead glob­al mar­ket­ing and US busi­ness for the Glob­al Health unit, re­spec­tive­ly.

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