Coy as ever, Dan Vasella plays down speculation that he is inching closer to moving on. Asked yet again, about his recent decision to appoint former vaccines head Joerg Reinhardt a new chief operating officer, the Novartis ceo says that, after 12 years on the job, he still gets a thrill.

“I don’t know if baby is the right word, but there is an emotional connection and a deep desire that (Novartis) succeeds and that it’s going well and that people are happy, at least most of the time,” he tells Reuters. “I see many reasons to go but I see even more reasons to continue.”

“The obvious is sometimes not what happens. I believe that some people probably believe that, others probably don’t believe it. I explicitly said that it would be, in my view, a shortcoming if there was just one potential successor. It would be naive to think that every day is just fantastic to go to work and I wouldn’t know what else to do. That is not the case. But I also have to say it is a very rewarding job.”

Vasella’s tenure has been marked by controversy over his insistence on remaining chairman and ceo (back story here and here). Many rival drugmakers, meanwhile, have named a new ceo since 2006, including Roche, Glaxo, AstraZeneca, Wyeth, Lilly and Sanofi-Aventis.

Separately, Vasella says the economic downturn will soon hit pharma. “We are not affected yet, but conceptually I think it’s unlikely that eventually the healthcare industry will not be affected,” he tells Reuters.

“But this comes relatively late and I don’t think as deep (for pharma as for other sectors). From the point of view of economic downturns I’ve seen we’ve always been less affected. The question is only how deep will it be, how damaging it will be, how long it will be. A cooling down was absolutely necessary, in my mind. But I think we’re going beyond that.”

Novartis is not looking to cut jobs because of the slowdown, but if it came to it Vasella would prefer solutions like shorter working hours over making people redundant. Although he did not mention that Novartis has cut about 3,000 jobs over the past several months (look here and here).

“The real problem is unemployment, and the real problem is the political unrest that follows unemployment. I feel that we have, to some degree, a responsibility - at least for the blue-collar workers - to maintain jobs.”