Way over budget and years late — AstraZeneca’s massive HQ project offers a troubling symbol
When Pascal Soriot took the helm at a deeply troubled AstraZeneca five years ago, one of his first acts was to slash staff and boldly blueprint a large new headquarters facility in Cambridge in the UK, where company scientists and top academics could brush shoulders and spark fresh innovation. And he planned to move in last year.
On Tuesday, though, the CEO turned out at a ceremony to make the completion of just one stage of construction. And Soriot had to concede that the building — intended to symbolize the pharma giant’s embrace of the latest technologies and scientific insights on drug R&D — had also come to represent the company’s inability to stay on schedule with its turnaround plan.
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