AstraZeneca PLC paid CEO Pascal Soriot £9.4 million in 2017, down 34% from £14.3 million in total compensation the previous year, even as the U.K. pharmaceutical giant launched five new medicines to offset the loss of patent exclusivity on blockbuster cholesterol medicine Crestor and the antipsychotic Seroquel.
In 2016, Soriot's compensation package had been inflated by awards offered to match long-term incentives set at his previous company, Roche Holding AG, where he was COO until 2012, when he joined the Cambridge, England-based pharmaceutical group. Those matched incentives vested in 2016, a company spokesperson said. Looking ahead, both Soriot and CFO Marc Dunoyer will receive a 2.5% salary increase from Jan. 1, 2018, in line with the average increase across all employees at the drugmaker, according to the company's annual report.
Full-year revenue declined by 2% in 2017 due to generic competition on some of its best-selling drugs, but sales in the last quarter of the year picked up thanks to booming growth in China, the group's second-largest market.
The company has also made advances in pioneering research, notably with immuno-oncology therapy Imfinzi, which recently gained U.S. approval for a type of lung cancer. AstraZeneca is banking on a rich early pipeline of cancer medicines to drive growth in the years to come.
In July, Soriot was rumored to have been approached for the top job at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, which has lost three CEOs in as many years, although AstraZeneca declined to comment at the time. The Israel-based generics group appointed Kare Schultz, H. Lundbeck A/S' former CEO, as its top executive in September.
Separately, AstraZeneca said in the annual report that it was named as a defendant in an Anti-Terrorism Act civil lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia in the U.S. in October 2017. The company said the suit was on behalf of U.S. nationals killed or wounded in Iraq between 2005 and 2009, alleging that it violated the act by selling drugs and medical supplies to the Iraqi Ministry of Health. Other companies were also named in the lawsuit, AstraZeneca said.
