The year 2023 must have seemed very distant back in 2014 when Pascal Soriot was fending off Pfizer. The AstraZeneca boss pledged to nearly double sales to $45 billion. Few nowadays take the target that seriously.
But the direction of travel was the key point. As speculation mounts that another foreign suitor — this time Novartis — is eyeing up AstraZeneca’s drugs pipeline, Mr Soriot has his eyes fixed on the sunlit uplands of 2018.
That just leaves 2017 to contend with. He says the next 12 to 18 months are critical for AstraZeneca. This is when some of its star candidates have to leap out of the lab and into hospitals and pharmacies. It badly needs new blockbusters to make up for disappearing sales