Since becoming ceo nine months ago, Gerard Le Fur has avoided talking much about anything, despite the failure to win FDA approval for Acomplia, the weight-loss pill, and a thin product pipeline. Charges that Sanofi-Aventis lacked transparency prompted his decision to hold an R&D day last month, the drugmaker’s first attempt to explain in detail the group’s portfolio of experimental drugs since Sanofi’s merger with Aventis in 2004.

“We are not very chatty as a company. I’m a backstage person – it’s a genetic thing,” Le Fur tells The Financial Times in an interview in which he hinted at costcutting and an appetite for fresh acquisitions. “We were not transparent enough. We have to admit to our errors, to be more Anglo-Saxon and more communicative.”

But even the R&D day didn’t go off well. The portfolio was met with criticism. Analysts argued there was little new data and the presentation merely confirmed drugs that had been abandoned or delayed in their development.

But Le Fur defends the decision to hold the event by stressing the symbolism, the paper writes. He is proud of the fact that, although held in Paris, the traditionally very French company had proceedings conducted in English by a new executive team that is younger, more international and includes more women. “The news flow would have been better in 2008,” he says. “But we did it to show we are no longer a ‘Frenchie company’,” he says, switching fleetingly from French to Franglais to emphasise the point. “The new generation is now arriving.”

While proud to show his modernising credentials, he is keen to emphasise the continuity he provides between his stewardship and that of his predecessor. He was the long-standing head of research and development, and developed close – some would say too close – connections to his forerunner.

Le Fur, a scientist and career researcher, was groomed as dauphin to Jean-François Dehecq, the charismatic boss who built Sanofi-Aventis through acquisitions during the past quarter of a century, before relinquishing the ceo role in January while remaining chairman.

The transition was so easy and low-key that the two men have not even moved offices. “I’ve been part of the band of Jean-François for more than 30 years,” says Le Fur. “For all that time, I had the luck of having him as my personal coach. He knows my family. He has said he doesn’t know whether I am his son or his brother. We speak all the time. We are very close.”

But he adds that the decision to split the two top jobs “seems healthy” and in line with broader trends. It was the “enormous change in the environment” for pharmaceuticals, not any break with his mentor, that has driven a series of reforms in recent months.

Contrary to Dehecq’s tough and charismatic image as “Le Grand”, “he is someone who always accepted disagreements”, says Le Fur. “We are different, of course. If I acted like him it would be ridiculous. He was the father-founder who created this company. I try modestly to function in my way. But it’s only different in style, not in substance.”

He has broadened the senior team from the longstanding francophone “band of four” around Dehecq: himself, Jean-Claude Leroy, who runs finance and legal affairs, and Hanspeter Spek, the head of pharmaceutical operations. Now he says the circle of about 20 people meets regularly, often focusing on specific issues, and speaking English. While not all are former rugby players like him, he says: “It’s a game where the team makes the difference. I don’t know an individual who can do things alone today.”

There is also less formality. “To many staff, he is Mr Dehecq. I’m Gérard,” says Le Fur. The black, tie-less shirt he sports on the day we meet is an indication of his casual, less hierarchical style.

If assuming joint responsibility alongside his boss may have been awkward, relinquishing control of research and development, his own passion, cannot have been easy. “I am an industrialist to the tips of my fingernails,” he says and reiterates repeatedly. Marc Cluzel is now the “patron” of research and development, but Le Fur adds that “for personal reasons, I’ll remain a scientist . . . reading the Financial Times, but still also Nature and Science”.

Asked how the company will stimulate innovation, he says: “We have to avoid bureaucracy, to adapt and be careful that the tool does not become the objective,” citing high throughput screening and the decoding of the genome: scientific advances too optimistically portrayed as leading to rapid new medical breakthroughs.

He is sceptical of simple business formulas. “If there was a secret, it would always be the same people who succeed. Even if I knew, would I tell you?” he asks. “I fear there is no recipe, but what’s true is that we need lots of humility.”

Whether in consultation or conflict with his predecessor, other discernable changes have taken place at Sanofi-Aventis this year. He wants more biological products to supplement its historical strength in small chemical-based medicines; and to boost the quantity of compounds licensed from others. Le Fur has taken steps to placate shareholders with dividends and share buyback programmes, and hints at “paying more attention to our costs.” On the subject of generics, he is more conciliatory than Dehecq, recognizing that his competitors will underpin future health systems.

His office overlooks Bercy, the ministry of finance and economics where three years ago Nicolas Sarkozy, now French president, brokered the Aventis merger with Sanofi, but he says the company receives no political favouritism today. And he says Sanofi-Aventis, in turn, is no longer French. “We are a European company, with a global approach.”

One of Gérard Le Fur’s first big management tests came earlier this year, when the FDA rejected Acomplia, which grew out of a researcher’s hunch linked to marijuana 15 years ago and was designed to be a mass-market blockbuster. The plan was that the drug would work by blocking the brain’s cannabinoid receptors, which trigger hunger when stimulated by marijuana. The drugmaker was excited when human tests confirmed animal research that it could help people lose weight and give up smoking, but the FDA feared the med could also potentially raise the risk of suicide.

Le Fur, who adds that he has never taken marijuana, says the company should have paid attention earlier to its more medically significant but commercially more limited use in cutting visceral fat, essential for type 2 diabetes, where benefits would have more easily outweighed the risks.

“The lesson is to be pragmatic, not dogmatic,” he says. “You have to be humble, and not live on certainties. That doesn’t mean abandoning method or rationality, but recognising science is eminently variable and you have to adapt.”

On prices: The trend of ever-higher prices for new drugs “cannot continue” and Le Fur predicts that “volume will dominate over price.” He says a shift towards lower prices to boost volumes as drugmakers increasingly focus on the world’s fast-growing emerging economies was one of the biggest changes in the drugs industry. “For me,” he tells the FT, “the future is in the South.”

On acquisitions: Le Fur points to Japan as a potential market, but stressed they would not be “at any price” and would take time. He indicated that biotech purchases would happen far more quickly, and that licensing from other companies would increase from 15 to 20 percent of the pipeline currently to 25 to 30 percent in coming years.

On cost cutting: There is “no fat” in the company but adds, “We will pay more attention to our costs…in a more difficult environment.”

On patents: Prices in poorer countries should be lower than those in the West, Le Fur say, while vowing to fight the decision this year by Thailand to break the Plavix patent. “If states no longer recognise patents,” he says to the paper, “how do you want us to do research?”

On price regulation: Le Fur wants a single, centralised system across Europe to negotiate prices, in place of the cumbersome country-by-country approach that exists now. And he denounces “parallel imports,” by which intermediaries exploit differences in drug prices across the European Union, as “a real gangrene” that raised the risk of counterfeits and “benefits patients in no way.”

On the Merck joint venture: “We have no desire to change and nor do they,” he says.