AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot vigorously defended his recently secured $23.5 million pay package, citing the UK pharma’s need to compete for talent.
“It really is about making the company competitive and attractive for my successor,” Soriot said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call with the press. “I intend to be here for a while but, of course, at some point, there will be a successor,” he added.
Soriot rebuffed talk of his departure in September last year after news reports caused a 2% slide in shares.
“We may be based in the UK, but we are a global company and we compete for global talent,” Soriot said. Strong remuneration helps attract the best talent “from across the industry – including people who are working out of US companies,” where compensation is typically higher than in the UK, he added.
The company’s shareholders greenlit a £18.7 million pay package for Soriot on April 11. Around 36% of the shareholders had voted against the £1.8 million ($2 million) raise and some advisory groups described it as excessive, according to the Financial Times.
Soriot has been vocal about wanting US-sized pay since he stepped into the CEO role at AstraZeneca in 2013 with a package worth $5.5 million. His success in securing the pay hike could potentially benefit other European CEOs such as GSK’s Emma Walmsley, who was paid £12.7 million ($15.9 million) last year.
Aradhana SarinAstraZeneca also unveiled three cuts Thursday, continuing with the “ruthless” pipeline prioritization it mentioned during its previous earnings presentation. In Q1, the company dropped a Phase 2 LOX-1 targeting monoclonal antibody, dubbed MEDI6570, for patients post-myocardial infarction. The move was based on “internal evaluation,” CFO Aradhana Sarin said.
The company also axed a porcupine inhibitor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, named AZD5055, which it purchased from Redx for $17 million in 2020. An antisense oligonucleotide for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, dubbed AZD7503, licensed from Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 2018 for $30 million, was also cut.
AstraZeneca also addressed the Biosecure Act, which would stymie business partnerships between firms working in the US and certain Chinese biotechnology companies “of concern.”
“We actually are not affected very much by that,” Sarin said, adding that the company has a global supply chain. “We manufacture and supply different products in different geographies from different sites,” she said.
Sanofi said Thursday morning it is doing the work to adapt to any policy changes, adding the China bill “raises the bar on new contracts.” On Wednesday, Roche said it expected only “minor exposure” to the China bill, while Novartis said Tuesday that it would gradually rework its CRO collaborations to prepare for potential risks. Other pharmaceutical companies have raised regional manufacturing models as a way to address those risks.