Pascal Soriot was born in France on May 23,1959. He holds a doctor of veterinary medicine from École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort, Maisons-Alfort. Pascal later earned an MBA from HEC, Paris.
He started his career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1986, joining Roussel Uclaf. This was previously the second largest pharmaceutical company in France until 1997 when it was purchased by Hoechst AG. Pascal joined the company as a salesman and was stationed in Australia. He was promoted in 1996 to General Manager of Hoechst Marion Roussel in Australia, then in April 1997 moved to Tokyo, Japan.
Pascal joined Aventis in America in 2000. He was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Aventis USA in 2002. The company became Sanofi Aventis USA in 2004. Next he moved to Roche in 2006. Pascal became the Chief Executive of Roche subsidiary Genentech from April 2009 to 2010. After which he rejoined Roche Pharma AG as Chief Operating Officer. Pascal held this position until September 2012.
He was named as the new Chief Executive of AstraZeneca, the world’s fifth largest pharmaceutical company on August 28, 2012. He took up the position on October 1, 2012, he was also elected Director the same year.
Pascal took over the company when it was in bad shape. Profits fell 31 percent between the second and third quarters of 2012. One of the main reasons for the decline was the expiration of a number of its pharmaceutical patents, including Crestor (a treatment for cholesterol) and Nexium (a heartburn remedy) and there was no new products to replace them. For a number of years AstraZeneca had failed to invest in R&D and this was something that Pascal needed to immediately address.
He had to take the painful step of lower the workforce by around 2,300 employees who were mostly in the production lines. He relocated the company’s headquarters to its R&D hub in Cambridge while shutting down another R&D facility. Pascal focused on R&D as well.
By April 2014, AstraZeneca was healthy enough to refuse a €87 billion takeover bid from Pfizer.
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