JOHNSON & JOHNSON CHAIRMAN SELECT RALPH LARSEN

JOHNSON & JOHNSON CHAIRMAN SELECT RALPH LARSEN will move up next spring from his current position as consumer sector chairman to the top J&J executive position. Larsen, 49, who is also a vice chairman of the company's executive committee, will assume the titles held by James Burke, 63, since 1976. Burke will become chairman of the strategic planning committee. With Larsen's appointment, J&J is establishing a new office of the chairman. The restructuring will be effective April 26, the date of the next annual stockholders' meeting. The management change was announced Oct. 24. The chairman of J&J's other two business sectors, Robert Campbell (professional), and Robert Wilson (pharmaceutical), are taking the titles of vice chairmen of the board. Campbell, 55, and Wilson, 48, had previously been vice chairmen of the executive committee. Campbell and Wilson will assume the duties previously handled by David Clare, who is president of J&J and chairman of the executive committee. In an Oct. 24 announcement of the new management, J&J notes that Larsen, Campbell and Wilson have, "for the past several years," been preparing to assume top management responsibilities at J&J. Clare, also 63, will become chairman of the finance committee next spring. He had been president since 1976. The title of president will no longer be used. Neither Burke nor Clare will stand for re-election to the board in 1990. With Burke stepping down and David Collins' departure at the end of last year, the J&J senior management group from the Tylenol crisis period will be gone. Larsen, ironically was not with J&J during the period of the first Tylenol tampering. Pierre Dupasquier, currently a group chairman and president of the Personal Products (sanitary products) subsidiary, will succeed Larsen as chairman of the consumer sector and member of the executive committee. Dupasquier joined J&J in 1985, prior to which he was with the European company BSN-Gervais-Danone where he was involved in the company's dairy products business. The consumer segment has been the largest of the company's three segments in terms of revenues, comprising over 42% of total sales in 1987. Major brands include Stayfree, Sure & Natural, and Carefree sanitary protection products, Johnson's Baby products, Band-Aid bandages, o.b. tampons, Reach toothbrushes and Tylenol (OTC). Campbell and Wilson, in addition to their new responsibilities, will continue as chairman of the professional and pharmaceutical sectors and chief operating officers of those businesses. Larsen has been chairman of the consumer group since late 1986. He joined J&J in 1962 and became VP-marketing for the McNeil Consumer Products subsidiary in 1980. He left the company in the fall of 1981 to become president of Becton Dickinson's consumer products division and then returned to J&J in the fall 1983 to become president of its Chicopee subsidiary. Larsen was appointed a company group chairman in the early part of 1986, with responsibility for the company's Technicare and Ultrasound diagnostic subsidiaries. Both companies have since been divested.