CSL named interim CEO and managing director Gordon Naylor its next chair on 26 October, with the role due to begin on 31 March 2027. The ASX filing confirms the handover date, while Reuters and Bloomberg independently reported the appointment.
The timetable is tied to a second executive transition. Naylor will remain interim CEO and managing director until 1 February 2027, when Deborah Waterhouse is due to take over as CEO. After that handoff, the company says Naylor will return to a non-executive director role and become Chair Elect. He is scheduled to assume the chair on 31 March, the same day Dr Brian McNamee will retire from CSL’s board.
The board described its decision as the result of a thorough process and said it had unanimously selected Naylor as the person best placed to lead it. Its rationale is unusually company-specific: Naylor is a former senior CSL executive, has served as a non-executive director, and brings extensive knowledge of the group’s plasma and vaccine businesses. This is an internal handover from the executive suite to the boardroom, not an outside appointment.
That distinction matters because the chair and CEO roles will not remain combined. The plan gives Waterhouse the executive role first, then moves Naylor out of interim management before he takes the board chair. It is a staged separation of operating leadership and governance, with two dates readers can track: 1 February for the CEO transition and 31 March for the chair transition.
CSL’s decision sits alongside other board refreshes, including Bank of America’s recent additions of Jim Fitterling and Bill Thomas. The moves are different: those were new director appointments, while CSL is sequencing a chair succession around a CEO handoff. For employees and investors, the useful signal is the timetable and the board’s stated reason for choosing a leader with long institutional knowledge. The company has not yet announced the full board composition after McNamee’s retirement, so the next public milestone remains the March handover.
In practical terms, Waterhouse will have nearly two months as CEO before Naylor assumes the chair, separating the start of operational accountability from the board handover. The dates are confirmed in the ASX filing.
