Pascal Soriot confident AstraZeneca will ride China storm

The chief executive of AstraZeneca has said that the “panic” over China’s anti-corruption investigation into the country’s healthcare sector was already subsiding.

Speaking before the FTSE 100 company’s third-quarter results on Thursday, Sir Pascal Soriot said that Beijing’s clampdown was a good development as it would help to flush out bad industry practices such as “off-label promotion”: selling drugs to treat conditions for which they are not approved.

AstraZeneca, Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company and the largest multinational drug group in China, had warned investors last month that the investigation had hit prescription volumes and access to doctors.

Soriot told The Times that although the Chinese government had clarified that the focus was on hospital management and not drug companies: “When you have a campaign like