05:57

AstraZeneca is the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 index, with investors unnerved by a media report that chief executive Pascal Soriot has been offered a job by Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

AstraZeneca declined to comment, saying it never comments on market speculation. Its shares fell more than 5% in early trading and were later down 4.7% at £49.49.

Financial news website Calcalist said Soriot would earn twice as much as his predecessor at Teva and receive a signing-on bonus of about $20m, although the financial terms were still being discussed. Teva has been without a permanent CEO since February when Erez Vigodman stepped down, and its finance chief Eyal Desheh resigned at the end of last month.



Soriot has run Britain’s second-biggest drugmaker since 2012 and famously fought off a takeover approach from American rival Pfizer at £55 a share in 2014. He has focused on rebuilding the drug pipeline to replace lost revenues after a string of patent expiries on blockbuster medicines, by investing in areas such as immuno-oncology – drugs that harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer.