This week’s round-up includes the appointment of independent directors by Sanofi’s board of directors, CEO appointments by Fosun Kite Biotechnology and Milestone Pharmaceuticals as well as executive appointments by Tocagen, GW Pharmaceuticals, Bone Therapeutics and Tris Pharma.

Merger & acquisition (M&A) activity among pharmaceutical and bioscience companies has shown no signs of slowing down. More importantly, even though AstraZeneca's rejection of Pfizer's $120bn plus takeover overture has meant that 2014 cannot boast the largest ever M&A deal, the number of $10bn transactions this year has still surpassed that of 2012 and 2013.

Cambridge, UK-based Kymab, a monoclonal antibody biopharmaceutical company, has named Steve Arkinstall chief scientific officer and Nigel Clark president and head of business development. Mr Arkinstall joins the company from Merck Serono where he held a number of senior management roles including leadership of the Serono Research Institute in Boston as well as head of global technologies and external innovation. He succeeds Allan Bradley as CSO at Kymab. Mr Bradley, a founder of the company, will remain on the executive leadership team.

Biopharma financing in Q3 2013 totaled $4.6 billion, a 58% drop from the second quarter; Perrigo’s $8.3 billion acquisition of Elan made up more than half of the M&A dollar value; and marketed products made up the majority of licensed products.