AstraZeneca loses chief financial officer to Goldman Sachs
LONDON: AstraZeneca said on Wednesday that it was losing its chief financial officer to Goldman Sachs Group, just months after completing the $15.2 billion purchase of MedImmune, an American biotechnology firm, that some investors said was too expensive.
Jon Symonds, who joined Zeneca from KPMG in 1997 and was instrumental in arranging the $30 billion merger with Astra of Sweden a year later, will leave the company at the end of July. He will join Goldman Sachs, one of AstraZenecas corporate brokers, as a managing director in London in September.
Symonds was passed over more than a year ago in a race for the chief executive position at AstraZeneca, Britains second-largest drugmaker after GlaxoSmithKline. The firm appointed David Brennan, head of the American unit, to the post instead. His departure nevertheless surprised analysts, some of whom said that whoever replaces Symonds will face a big challenge of adding products through acquisitions to help the firms struggling pipeline while avoiding spending too much.
“Investors werent happy what they paid for MedImmune but they need to bring more products on board,” said Tim Race, a pharmaceutical analyst at ING Markets in London.
AstraZeneca is trying to regain investors confidence following some setbacks with experimental medicines and because of a debt rating cut in April by Fitch Ratings for using debt to pay for MedImmune, which sent shares plummeting.
Goldman Sachs, which advised MedImmune on the sale to AstraZeneca, had counted AstraZeneca among its clients for years. It worked on the merger that created the firm and advised AstraZeneca last year on the acquisition of Cambridge Antibody Technology Group, which gave it some experimental asthma and cancer drugs.
Symonds will join other high-profile hires at Goldman. Peter Sutherland, chairman of BP, and Mario Monti, the former European Union antitrust commissioner, are among Goldmans senior advisers.
“I regret Jons decision to leave AstraZeneca, however, the move to Goldman Sachs represents an exciting career challenge for him and I wish him every success with it,” Louis Schweitzer, AstraZenecas chairman, said in a statement.
AstraZeneca, based in London, said an external search is underway to find a successor.