Pascal Soriot's big year at the helm of AstraZeneca is crowned with a knighthood
Pascal Soriot’s victory lap leading up to his 10th anniversary as CEO of a radically transformed AstraZeneca comes with a knighthood.
Soriot — born and raised in France, head of a Cambridge, UK-based pharma giant and a citizen of Australia — received the knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022 for services rendered during the global outbreak of Covid-19.
While severely hampered in the US and Europe by early safety frets, AstraZeneca went on to distribute one of the most widely used vaccines developed against the virus — much of it at cost after a breakneck development program. And the company also developed the Evusheld antibody. But the knighthood can also be seen as a tacit recognition that Soriot kept his promise to remake AstraZeneca when he stepped up to the helm of the weakest player among the top 10 pharmas in the world.
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