AstraZeneca’s boss is a boardroom superstar but a potential £2m cherry is pushing the point

  • Date: 12-May-2021
  • Source: The Guardian
  • Sector:Economy
  • Country:Middle East
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AstraZeneca’s boss is a boardroom superstar but a potential £2m cherry is pushing the point

A majority is a majority, but a rebellion of 40% against an executive pay policy is too large to be pinned solely on those brain-dead fund managers who outsource their thinking to proxy voting agencies.

At AstraZeneca some serious institutions, with Aviva Investors and Standard Life Aberdeen to the fore, clearly thought the company was pushing things too far by adding a potential £2m cherry on top of their chief executive, Pascal Soriot’s, already substantial pay package. The rebels had a point.

Yes, Soriot is a boardroom superstar thanks to AstraZeneca’s success in supercharging the development and production of the Oxford University vaccine for no profit. Communication with regulators went awry at times, and Soriot himself obviously wasn’t getting his hands dirty in the labs. But the boss, even when operating from Australia, is doing an excellent job of standing up to irritating and ungrateful EU commissioners, which is also part of the pandemic operation. And, amid it all, the company didn’t miss a beat on its day job and had time to spend $39bn buying the rare disease specialist Alexion, which looks a promising deal.