Perrigo CEO Out as Board Enforces Conduct Code
Perrigo has replaced its chief executive for personal conduct, a rare case of a board holding its most senior leader to the same standards it sets for everyone else.
“The Board expects all colleagues, especially our senior leaders, to uphold those standards at all times,” says Orlando D. Ashford, Chair of Perrigo’s Board of Directors, adding that the board “acted decisively”.
Patrick Lockwood-Taylor has resigned as President and CEO, and from the board, effective immediately. The move follows a board determination that certain personal conduct on his part was not consistent with the consumer health company’s Code of Conduct and core values.
Notably, Perrigo was explicit that the conduct did not involve its business, strategy, operations or financial reporting. The exit is about behaviour, not performance.
The decision is a pointed example of culture being enforced from the top down rather than the bottom up. Codes of conduct are routinely applied to junior staff, yet far less often invoked to remove a sitting chief executive whose work is not in question.
The interim role goes to Albert A. Manzone, who has sat on Perrigo’s board since 2022 and knows the company from the inside out. Ashford points to more than 30 years of global leadership across consumer goods, consumer health, luxury and hospitality.
Perrigo has also launched a comprehensive search for a permanent successor, leaving the interim appointment to steady the business in the meantime.
Why the board reached for an insider
Albert was most recently Deputy Chief Executive of Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer. He previously led food group Whole Earth Brands and held senior roles at Novartis Consumer Health and PepsiCo.
His framing of the job is deliberately steady. “My priority as interim CEO is continuity, to keep that strategy on course and to support a talented leadership team as we sustain our momentum on value creation,” he says.
That continuity message is doing real work, reassuring investors and staff that a conduct-driven exit at the top will not derail the strategy beneath it.
Transition on top of a restructuring
The leadership change lands at an already turbulent moment. Just three months ago, in March, Perrigo announced it would cut roughly 7% of its workforce under a programme it calls Project Energize.
Those cuts form part of a two-year, enterprise-wide effort to sharpen accountability and streamline decision-making, designed to create a more agile and resilient business.
Against that backdrop, the board reaffirmed its full-year 2026 outlook alongside the leadership news, signalling that the financial plan is unchanged even as the corner office changes hands.
The episode now leaves Perrigo managing two difficult transitions at once, a restructuring of the workforce and a search at the very top. For now, the board is betting that a trusted insider can hold both steady. As Albert puts it, the focus is simply to “keep that strategy on course”.
