AstraZeneca boss under pressure on pay as revenues take a tumble

AstraZeneca’s chief executive faced an investor showdown on Friday as the drugs giant revealed disappointing results hours before being quizzed on his £9.4 million pay package.

Pascal Soriot was in town for the FTSE 100 firm’s annual meeting and said he was “confident of delivering on our goals”.

But the City was unimpressed after the firm posted a 4% revenue drop to $5.2 billion (£3.9 billion) for the three months to March and shares fell 97p to 5248p.

Soriot is under pressure to deliver growth after pledging, while fending off a 2014 takeover from US rival Pfizer, to produce annual sales of $45 billion by 2023.

Cambridge-headquartered AstraZeneca admitted that sales of its cholesterol-fighting drug Crestor were down in Europe and Japan, hurt by competition from generic medicines. That overshadowed a strong performance in China and improved returns from cancer and diabetes treatments.

Operating profits fell to $696 million from $917 million, largely because of investing in new launches.

Moves to boost the group’s bottom line have included selling off some rights to products.

But some shareholder groups have urged investors to vote against Soriot’s pay deal at today’s meeting.

Earlier this month Institutional Shareholder Services raised concerns over Soriot’s £1.9 million bonus, which it said was “not suitably aligned with performance”.

Soriot, who was last year linked to a move to Israeli pharma firm Teva, remained upbeat today. He said the firm’s pipeline “continued to bring significant benefits for patients”.

Shore Capital’s Roddy Davidson was optimistic: “We are increasingly positive on the return to growth story at Astra, underpinned by new product launches.”