'Au­ton­o­my with bridges': The chief ar­chi­tect of the Alex­ion buy­out is now head­ed over to take com­mand. Here's what he's think­ing

As­traZeneca CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot has made it clear that he has a lot more in mind for new­ly pur­chased Alex­ion than soak­ing up the fran­chise drug side of the busi­ness and adding it to the phar­ma gi­ant’s rev­enue stream — while chop­ping costs down to pay for the deal. And now he’s putting one of the chief ar­chi­tects of the deal in place as the new CEO of Alex­ion.

The Big Phar­ma an­nounced this morn­ing that it’s ex­e­cut­ing a trade of sorts be­tween the teams of the two com­pa­nies. Sub­ject to a for­mal clo­sure of the deal, sanc­tioned by the FTC now, So­ri­ot is send­ing his CFO Marc Dunoy­er over to the Boston com­pa­ny while tak­ing Alex­ion CFO Arad­hana Sarin as the new num­bers chief at As­traZeneca.

Dunoy­er al­so be­comes As­traZeneca’s chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer, giv­ing him a big role in the deals to come.

I spoke with Dunoy­er about the Alex­ion deal a few weeks ago, ahead of this ex­ec­u­tive suite shake­up. In a close­ly fo­cused con­ver­sa­tion, Dunoy­er ex­plained how As­traZeneca nar­rowed a wide-rang­ing M&A search down to Alex­ion, of­fer­ing some in­sights on the role Alex­ion will play as the com­pa­ny’s new cen­ter for rare dis­eases. What fol­lows is the Q&A we had, edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

I start­ed by ask­ing how As­traZeneca de­cid­ed to go af­ter Alex­ion.

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