Astrazeneca CEO’s Pascal Soriot paid £17 million last year
Astrazeneca’s latest annual report showed that its CEO Pascal Soriot was paid £16.9 million in 2023 – a £1.6 million increase on his 2022 pay package of £15.3 million.
His 2022 pay package made him the highest paid CEO in the High Pay Centre’s 2022/23 review of FTSE 100 CEO pay by over £4.5 million. This year’s pay rise suggests there’s a relatively high chance he will be the highest paid CEO again this year, unless the CEO of another company has a much bigger increase in their pay package.
Pascal Soriot has consistently been one of the highest-paid CEOs in the FTSE 100, getting paid around 1,000 times more than a minimum wage worker and over a hundred times more than many of his own employees.
While having effective leadership is clearly necessary for managing a company the size of AstraZeneca, it’s also fair to question whether Soriot’s contribution to AstraZeneca has really been that much greater than many of his colleagues whose expertise and hard work are likely to have also played a major role in the company’s successes.
The High Pay Centre’s response to this story was covered widely in the national media including by the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Mail.