The New Man at Novartis

Joe Jimenez says that more than 20 years selling Clorox (CLX) bleach and Heinz ketchup taught him to make decisions quickly. Now, as CEO of Novartis (NVS), Europe's second-largest drugmaker, he'll try to prove that speed can also make a difference in the pharmaceutical business. Jimenez, 50, is replacing Daniel Vasella, 56, who oversaw the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy that created Novartis in 1996 and has run the company ever since.

At the moment, Jimenez is basking in the glow of Novartis' fourth-quarter results: Net income advanced 49% year over year to $2.32 billion on $12.6 billion in sales, up 28%. But the new CEO, who previously ran the pharmaceutical unit, will soon get a chance to test his reflexes. Novartis' best-selling treatments, the Diovan hypertension pill and Gleevec, a cancer medicine, begin to lose patent protection in 2012, and Novartis—like all large drugmakers—is scrambling to come up with the next generation of medicines.