Biography | Albert Bourla — The 42nd Street Tower That Named Him Pfizer's Next Chief

The handover was not a product launch on a congress floor. On 1 October 2018 Pfizer told the market that Ian Read would step aside and that Albert Bourla would become chief executive on 1 January 2019. CNBC carried the announcement the same morning. The company's own later proxy filings repeat the dates. The address on the contemporaneous SEC paper was this tower: 235 East 42nd Street. Emery Roth and Sons designed the 33-storey International Style slab. Pfizer had occupied it since the early 1960s. Bourla was already inside the building. He had been chief operating officer since 1 January 2018 and a director since 22 February 2018, when an 8-K recorded the board election. He was 56. He had been at the company since 1993. Read stayed on for a time as executive chairman. Bourla added the chairman title in January 2020, again per the later DEF 14A. In April 2018, months before the CEO announcement, Pfizer had already signed a 20-year lease at The Spiral, 66 Hudson Boulevard, and said colleagues would begin moving in 2022. The 42nd Street pair at 219 and 235 was sold. As of 2024-2025 the old headquarters has been under conversion to housing. A visitor in 2026 does not find a working Pfizer lobby. The 2016 entrance photograph is the headquarters as it still looked when the succession was announced. The portrait is a 2021 World Economic Forum still. Photo: entrance, Coolcaesar, 5 November 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: World Economic Forum, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.