Hank McKinnell

Henry A. McKinnell, Jr. (born February 23, 1943) is the former chief executive officer and former chairman of the board of directors of Pfizer Inc. He is also a director of Moody's.

He was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally worked towards a degree in chemistry but later changed his declared degree to business. He earned his bachelor's degree for business from the University of British Columbia in 1965. Later, he earned his master's and doctorate in business administration (finance subfield) from Stanford Business School.

His first job offer was for Pfizer, but he instead chose to work at American Standard for three years (1969–1971). He later joined Pfizer in early 1971. Over the course of the next 32 years, McKinnell climbed his way up several positions. He was named CEO as of January 2001 and named chairman in April 2001.

In 2003 he won the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship. McKinnell was known as an aggressive and hard line advocate of trade sanctions against developing countries in disputes over patents and other intellectual property rights on medicines. In 2006, several Stanford alums asked that McKinnell be removed from an advisory board at the Stanford Business School, due to the aggressive use of litigation against the head of the Philippines regulatory agency.

Following falling share prices, McKinnell resigned the CEO position on July 28, 2006 amid dissatisfaction from the Board of Directors and declining investor confidence and was replaced by Jeff Kindler on that day. He was scheduled to remain as chairman until February 2007.

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