Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) has announced that Chairman William D. Young will retire from the its board of directors as of the company’s 2014 annual meeting of stockholders. Young has been a member of the board since 1997 and has been chairman since 2010. He will be replaced by Stelios Papadopoulos, who has been a member of Biogen Idec’s board since 2008.

Papadopoulos said:

Bill took over as chairman at a difficult time for the company, went on to unify the Board, spearheaded the recruitment of a new management team and presided over a time of unprecedented growth for the company. His record will be hard to match.

Papadopoulos is a former investment banker with a focus in life-sciences companies. He is also chairman and co-founder of Exelixis, which develops cancer drugs, as well as a director of BG Medicine and chairman of Regulus Therapeutics. Prior to 1994, he was an investment banker with Cowen and Company.

An analyst told Bloomberg:

Stelios has as much, if not more, experience than anyone on planet earth right now advising biotech companies on how to create shareholder value.

Papadopoulos takes up the reins of a company that is in good shape for now. Biogen Idec is the third-largest biotechnology company. Its shares have almost doubled in the past year, due in large part to better-than-expected sales of its newest multiple sclerosis (MS) drug, Tecfidera. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company also markets MS drugs Avonex and Tysabri, and it is awaiting approval of three additional medicines for hemophilia and MS.

Tecfidera and the hemophilia drugs will drive performance in the short term, but Papadopoulos and the board will need to focus Biogen’s next sources of growth, what will drive earnings after 2020. The company has drugs in clinical trials for MS, spinal muscular atrophy and Alzheimer’s disease, and it likely will continue to search for additional assets, Papadopoulos said.

Biogen Idec shares are up more than 17% year to date and ended last week at $328.29. That is higher than the mean price target posted by Thomson/First Call, and it falls in a 52-week range of $160.42 to $331.74.

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