AstraZeneca signalled its readiness for change on Friday by appointing an outsider with extensive deal-making experience as its chief financial officer. The drugmaker said Simon Lowth, a former finance chief at Scottish Power, would take up his role on November 5.
Lowth, who also previously worked for management consultancy McKinsey & Co, replaces Jon Symonds, who quit this summer to join investment bank Goldman Sachs, after losing out in a 2005 race for the CEO job at AstraZeneca.
The Anglo-Swedish group had already said it was looking outside, preparing investors for a non-specialist appointment. "The CEO (David Brennan) is a pharma man, so I don't think it is necessary for the finance director to be one," Paul Diggle of Nomura Code Securities commented.
Shares in AstraZeneca slipped 0.4 percent to 24.11 pounds by 0850 GMT, in line with a weaker DJ Stoxx European drugs index. At Scottish Power, Lowth played a key role rejecting a bid from German utility E.On in 2005, and also in negotiating a successful take-over by Spain's Iberdrola in November 2006.
He also helped to refocus Scottish Power on its British utility business, as it sold off its Pacificorp business in the United States and its telecommunications unit. AstraZeneca Chairman Louis Schweitzer said his experience would prove invaluable, since the London-based drugmaker had embarked on its own "change journey".
AstraZeneca is seeking to reinvent itself after suffering a series of damaging setbacks with drugs in late-stage development, while its top-selling antiulcerant pill Nexium faces increasing competition. In April, it announced the biggest transaction since the creation of the group in 1999 by agreeing to buy US biotech firm MedImmune for more than $15 billion, taking it deep into the area of large-scale biologic medicines.
It is also in the process of a big cost-cutting drive aimed at saving over $900 million a year by 2010, as it battles to restock its pipeline of new drugs. AstraZeneca is widely seen as a potential candidate for more deal-making within the hard-pressed drugs sector - either as predator or prey.
"I suspect we will have some more big deals in the industry going forward and I wouldn't rule AstraZeneca out from being involved in them," Diggle said. The company has long been touted as a possible target for larger rivals that might be interested in acquiring its expertise in fields such as cancer medicine, despite the group's weak pipeline of new drugs.
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