Brian McNamee: a quiet achiever with a global reach

Brian McNamee has transformed CSL into a public company that is now one of the biggest in Australia with a market capitalisation of $125bn.

CSL chairman Brian McNamee. Picture: Aaron Francis

Some businessmen crow about the smallest of achievements; a new glitzy tower, a short-lived run by the share price or the opening of a new factory.

Then there are those who are known for their humility and ­reluctance to be in the spotlight, and who would prefer any attention is paid to their employees and their achievements.

Such is the case of Brian McNamee, who took the helm of the sleepy government-owned Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in the 1990s and transformed it from a low-profile creator of vaccines to a public company that is now one of the biggest in Australia with a market capitalisation of $125bn.

The lives saved and improved, and the value in financial terms created for all Australians, are truly astonishing — perhaps unparalleled in Australian corporate history — and for 23 of those formative years as CSL evolved into a global pharmaceutical giant, Dr McNamee was its chief executive.

Taking the helm in 1990, he was given the difficult task by the federal government to radically and quickly reshape CSL, preparing it for a possible sharemarket float.

In 1993, three years after Dr McNamee had taken the top job at CSL at the age of 33, the Keating government said it would sell the company. “They were going to chop us up and sell us off … Canberra thought we had no ­future,” Dr McNamee told The Weekend Australian recently.

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He listed CSL on the market in 1994 and a $1000 investment at listing would be worth almost $500,000 today.

The wealth created for the ­nation — measured in the share price, a quarter of a century of dividends, tens of thousands of ­advanced manufacturing and biotech jobs and one of Australia’s biggest centres for R&D spending — is an endowment that Dr McNamee championed and helped drive.

More importantly, of course, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved through CSL’s work in vaccines and blood plasma, as well as decisions taken decades ago by Dr McNamee and his team to invest millions of dollars in new drug trials that created blockbuster breakthroughs such as CSL’s cervical cancer vaccine.

It wasn’t always easy.

Dr McNamee almost saw his dreams of international expansion crumble 20 years ago when a collapsing blood plasma price caused by oversupply and falling demand ruined its profits and smashed the CSL share price.

His courageous decision to buy ZLB from the Swiss Red Cross made CSL a global player but widened its exposure to falling prices.

An illness took its toll on Dr McNamee but not on his work ethic or dedication to the company, and as he physically recovered, he doggedly stuck to his global expansion strategy — as some around him panicked — with plasma prices soon rebounding and the share price beginning its two-decade rally.

“We have helped them create wealth for themselves and their family,” Dr McNamee told The Australian late last year when CSL marked its 25th anniversary of listing on the ASX.

“Occasionally I get people come up to me and tell me they have brought their kids a house with the money they have made from CSL.”

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