The CEO Who Took a Job His Friends Called a Suicide Mission

When Pascal Soriot was offered the chance to run AstraZeneca Plc in 2012, the British drugmaker lagged in developing immuno-therapies, a new frontier for cancer research; it was poised to lose about $17 billion of sales through 2018 due to expiring patents; and its slate of new medicines appeared lackluster. The situation was so bleak that one colleague told him it would be “suicidal” to sign up. Soriot took the job.

“They looked like they’d lost their way a little bit,” Soriot says. “There was an opportunity to make a difference and rebuild.”