Less than a year after being passed over to succeed JP Garnier as ceo, Chris Viehbacher resigned from the drugmaker’s board today and plans to leave altogether on December 1. Currently, Viehbacher is president of the North American Pharmaceuticals.

As a consolation prize, Viehbacher was given about $5 million in stock and the board seat after he lost the race to succeed Garnier. The shares reportedly were to become payable in two tranches, the first at the end of this year, and the balance in 2011, but only if he remained at Glaxo.

Viehbacher, 49, raised his exposure with investors and the media last year by steering Glaxo through the Avandia safety crisis. A dual citizen of Canada and Germany, he speaks English, French and German and ran the European business before taking over the US in 2003, giving him broad global experience.

Nonetheless, the job went to Andrew Witty, who reorganized Glaxo’s European operations, assigning marketing execs by disease and centralizing some back-office jobs. He won praise internally for delivering solid sales in Europe despite tough generic competition and increasingly frugal government health-care systems.

Since becoming ceo in June, he has continued a cost-cutting campaign, created an emerging markets unit and is giving government healthcare systems a say in deciding which drugs advance in its research pipeline.

Witty offered the standard departing comment for a former rival in a statement: “I would like to thank Chris for his significant contribution to GSK, he is one of the most talented and respected executives in this industry and we wish him well in his future endeavours.”