AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot is already one of the highest paid pharmaceutical CEOs in Europe. Still, shareholders of the U.K.-based company can’t agree on whether he deserves a raise or not.
Investors in the pharma giant are set to vote on whether to approve Soriot’s 2024 pay package at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Thursday. The proposed plan would raise the maximum amount Soriot can take home to 18.7 million pounds ($23.5 million), depending if he can reach certain targets for sales, earnings per share, and new drug approvals.
Soriot, 64, hit most of his set targets for 2023, earning 16.9 million pounds ($21.2 million), according to company’s annual report.
“The new policy reflects the need to be competitive in the global market for talent and our compensation is structured to reward performance,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson told Quartz in an email. “The proposed adjustments only apply to the discretionary bonus and the company share elements of remuneration and so are not guaranteed payments.”
Two influential proxy advisory firms have already come out against the proposed pay plan, characterizing it as excessive.
Glass Lewis said in its recommendation that “we remain unconvinced that increases of this scale are justified at this time.” The firm added that there is a lack of evidence that the CEO had been underpaid compared to his peers.
The Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said it is concerned by the “the scale of the increase,” and believes Soriot’s current compensation is “competitive against European peers,” The Financial Times reports.
Some of the company’s top shareholders disagree.
“There is a compensation issue at AstraZeneca,” GQG Chief Investment Officer Rajiv Jain, one of the top 20 shareholders of the company, told The Financial Times. “The CEO is massively underpaid . . . given AstraZeneca’s impressive turnaround since he joined more than a decade ago.”
Since Soriot took charge of the company in 2012, AstraZenca stock has grown 186% to about $67 per share.
How does Soriot’s pay compare to other CEOs
Soriot’s $21.2 million pay in 2023 was slightly below the compensation of CEOs at American pharma companies during that same year.
Eli Lilly CEO David A. Ricks earned $26.6 million in 2023, according to the company’s annual report.
But Soriot’s pay was higher when compared to his European peers. He earned more than double the $9.8 million that Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen made in 2023.