Wanted: chief executive for shrinking drugs giant. Generous pay package but plenty of problems in the pipeline.
The long-term nature of the pharmaceuticals industry meant you could tell it wasn’t going to end well for David Brennan. His six-year tenure at AstraZeneca can be characterised by two things: slashing costs and shovelling cash. It became almost incidental that Astra was a drugs firm.
Replacing revenues lost from declining blockbuster treatments was never going to be easy. But scaling back on research and development was hopelessly short-sighted.
It was only a matter of time before shareholders stopped being distracted by the large sums Brennan was handing them and spotted that a once-great part of the ICI empire was sleepwalking towards extinction. There is a great debate over whether the Big Pharma model is dead.
It isn’t if you look across the street at GlaxoSmithKline, where Sir Andrew Witty has rediscovered a sense of entrepreneurialism and manages to wave the flag for Britain without sycophancy.
By contrast, Astra looks like it needs putting out of its misery. The sticking-plaster management put in place by Brennan’s speedy exit makes it vulnerable to a bid. Replete with cash from selling its baby-milk arm this week, US giant Pfizer could pounce. Now there’s a company to make Brennan’s cost-cutting look amateur.
