Interim Management. Leadership against the clock. Pharma and Life Sciences.

Interim management is the temporary deployment of external executives, as the German industry body DDIM soberly defines it. Behind the definition sits something very concrete: an experienced leader takes on operational line or leadership responsibility, with a clear mandate and a defined end. She executes rather than recommends. That separates the interim manager from the consultant.

Status separates her from the leased employee. Under a service contract, the interim manager determines working time, place and approach within the mandate and remains an independent entrepreneur. Temporary agency work, by contrast, means fixed-term employment, a transferred right of direction and integration into the organisation, with a licence requirement under the German AÜG. The line is no formality: it decides social security, liability and compliance (more in section 09).

Three contract routes exist in the market: the direct service contract between company and interim manager, the provider model with an intermediary as contracting party, and the placement model, in which the contract is concluded directly and the intermediary is accountable for selection and approach. We work on the placement model: the service contract is concluded directly between you and the interim manager, and we charge a one-off finding fee. The day rate belongs to the manager, with no running margin in between.

The interim management market in Germany stood at 2.625 billion euros in 2024 according to the DDIM market study 2025, below the forecast of 2.9 billion; for 2025 the association expected around 2.7 billion euros. The AIMP market study 2024/25, which measures the entire DACH region, arrives at 3.09 billion euros: Germany 2.4 billion, Switzerland 400 million, Austria 260 million. The figures differ because of survey year and scope, not because of a contradiction: DDIM measures Germany, AIMP the whole DACH region.

The supply side: around 12,000 active interim managers in Germany (DDIM), 16,700 across DACH (AIMP). Assignment reasons according to the EO Report 2025 (1,671 respondents): change management 31.2 percent, crisis management 13.8 percent, temporary reinforcement of the leadership team 13.5 percent. Utilisation ranges from 134 to 172 assignment days per year depending on the study; roughly half of all mandates run six to twelve months.

And one number that does not exist: none of the studies breaks out a separate pharma share. We do not invent it, we say so.

The IW study commissioned by the vfa (October 2024) reaches a blunt conclusion: one in four open positions in the German pharmaceutical industry cannot be filled. In 2023, 2,638 open positions faced 669 that arithmetically could not be staffed with suitably qualified candidates; nationwide, around 176,000 skilled workers were missing in pharma-relevant occupations, and in production a third of positions stayed open. The gaps cluster where the industry sits: Rhine-Main and Upper Bavaria with more than 12,200 missing specialists each. When a leadership or expert position permanently cannot be filled through regular hiring, interim shifts from stopgap to planning instrument.

The industry's rebuild is real and documented. Bayer reduced its workforce from 102,048 in June 2023 to 92,815 by the end of 2024, the cuts fall primarily on leadership layers according to the company, and the Frankfurt site will close by the end of 2028, affecting around 500 people in production and research. Every one of these moves creates transition situations: transformation programmes, carve-outs, site closures, knowledge retention. That is exactly where experienced leaders are needed for a defined time, people who have run this before.

The new EU GMP Annex 1 has been binding since 25 August 2023, expanded from 16 to 58 pages, with the Contamination Control Strategy at its core. An incomplete or merely static CCS is classified as a major deficiency in inspections and can endanger the operating licence of sterile lines. Add the permanent pressure of drug shortages: around 300 medicines were scarce at the end of 2022, more than 500 by October 2023 (BfArM list); in a 2024 Pro Generika member survey, 78 percent said they were withdrawing from markets because of stockpiling obligations. Remediation, CSV, nitrosamine reviews: the need for QA, QC and engineering expertise arises at short notice and does not tolerate 160 days of vacancy.

The CDMO market, estimated at around 199 billion US dollars, is reordering itself. The largest deal: Novo Holdings completed the acquisition of Catalent in December 2024 at an enterprise value of around 16.5 billion US dollars, while three fill-finish sites went to Novo Nordisk for 11 billion US dollars in parallel. Every integration, every carve-out, every capacity build-up needs leadership before the permanent organisation stands. That is interim management's hour.

Interim demand in pharma arises in two places: where a vacancy immediately touches release, supply capability or the operating licence, and where a transition needs leadership before the permanent organisation stands. That is how we order the roles, not by org chart.

Hardly any function shows the particularity of the pharma interim market as clearly as the Qualified Person under § 14 AMG, the German Medicinal Products Act: personal accountability for every released batch, formal qualification and notification duties, no room for improvisation. Whoever places here must know the legal position precisely, not approximately.

§ 15 AMG requires a licence to practise pharmacy or a university degree of at least four years in pharmacy, chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry and technology, biology, human or veterinary medicine, plus at least two years of practical experience in qualitative and quantitative medicinal product analysis; non-pharmacists additionally demonstrate defined subject knowledge. Under § 19 AMG the QP is responsible for every batch being manufactured and tested in accordance with the regulations, and certifies this in a continuous register.

External or contracted QPs are established market practice; service providers offer batch release flexibly, in some cases under their own manufacturing licence pursuant to § 13 AMG. Two things are non-negotiable. First, the notification to the authority: expertise must be demonstrated to the competent authority and the person notified before anything is released; § 15 paragraph 6 AMG at least eases the move between jurisdictions. Second, the indivisibility of the responsibility: batch certification under EU GMP Annex 16 is the QP's personal duty and can only be delegated to another Qualified Person, never to non-QPs.

Alongside the QP, the heads of production and quality control under the AMWHV remain distinct, indispensable functions, and wholesale distribution requires the responsible person under § 52a AMG, for whom the legislator deliberately prescribes no specific degree, only the necessary expertise. In short: an interim QP is feasible, but only done formally right. Qualification documents, notification, deputising rules and register keeping belong before the first day on site, not after.

Two figures, laid side by side. The average day rate of an interim manager stood at 1,302 euros in 2024 according to DDIM. The real daily cost of a permanent senior manager on a 120,000-euro gross salary comes to 1,301 euros under the DDIM full-cost model: around 247,000 euros of total annual cost, spread across 190 productive days. The gap between the two figures is one euro. The calculations rest on different bases, a market average here, a model calculation there, but they dispose of the reflex that interim is the expensive exception.

Counted in full: market data puts the interim day rate 30 to 60 percent above the calculated daily cost of an employee, but it carries social security, downtime, training and business development itself. A permanent hire adds the onboarding dip of the first three to six months, placement fees of 25 to 35 percent of the target annual salary and the mis-hire risk of a long-term commitment. And the vacancy itself costs money, every day: our analysis of what unfilled key positions do to pharma companies puts it at revenue losses in the millions.

The return: the Heuse study series, a survey of more than 900 interim managers, puts the return on interim management at 5.82 euros per euro invested; 14 percent of projects return more than tenfold. The publisher is a provider, the methodology is documented over many years. We read the figure as a benchmark, not as law.

And our own price tag, for completeness: in the provider model a running mark-up of 25 to 35 percent on the day rate is market practice (AIMP); in one documented example the client pays 1,200 euros per day and 900 euros reach the manager. That is legitimate, it funds support and infrastructure. We work differently: a one-off finding fee for the placement, with the day rate negotiated openly between you and the manager and kept undivided. No hidden margin, no running commission. You see the real costs, the manager keeps the full rate.

The interim manager's status is not a label, it is the result of lived practice. The overall assessment under § 7 SGB IV, the German Social Code, asks: instructions on time, place and manner of work? Integration into the client organisation? Entrepreneurial conduct with several clients? Genuine business risk? Professional mandates with a project character, a time limit and freedom in execution generally point to genuine self-employment. Pure long-term vacancy cover becomes critical, where an external fills exactly the same line function as predecessor and successor; the DDIM warns of this expressly.

The tools exist. The status determination procedure under § 7a SGB IV at the clearing office of the German Pension Insurance has, since the 2022 reform, offered a prognosis decision before the assignment starts and group determinations for identical contract setups. At the same time, the Federal Social Court tightened scrutiny across industries in 2024: neither a high day rate nor a limited-company structure offers protection on its own. A transitional rule under discussion (§ 127 SGB IV) is meant to relieve clients who acted in good faith, but as of today it is a legislative debate, not applicable law.

And the line to temporary agency work: since the 2017 AÜG reform, sham service contracts are sanctioned; where the right of direction passes in practice and the person is integrated, agency work exists, with a licence requirement and the fiction of an employment relationship as the sanction. For clients the point is simple: contract model and assignment reality must match. We raise this openly during the approach, name the limits and recommend specialised legal advice where needed, rather than promising a legal certainty nobody can seriously promise.

The model is deliberately small: few mandates in parallel, each in one pair of hands throughout. You describe the situation once, not three times. The proposals come from the pharma network we have cultivated in executive search for years, from general management down to site-head and quality roles. We only propose people we know, and we say so openly when we do not currently have the right ones.

The second advantage is the bridge: interim and executive search from one source. The interim appointment keeps the business running, the search for the permanent solution proceeds in parallel, and the documented handover is part of the mandate. Bridging never turns into dependency, and urgency never turns into a bad compromise.

The foundation remains the four markets: Rx specialty, OTC and consumer health, generics and biosimilars, CDMO and GMP. Whoever knows the commercial and regulatory mechanics of these subsegments recognises faster which profile will actually carry a given situation. Leadership for a defined time is the same craft as executive search, just with a stopwatch in hand.