The boss of AstraZeneca today revealed he had set up a taskforce in China to “double and triple check everything that we do” in the country after rival GlaxoSmithKline was embroiled in a £320 million corruption scandal.
“As soon as the first news came out of China we set up a taskforce to check everything we do,” Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive said. “We took all our suppliers through a validation process, and have gone through an entire analysis of our business to check everything we do is totally compliant. So far we haven’t found anything that is of any concern.”
At least 20 have been detained in China over allegations that GSK funnelled millions of pounds to travel agencies to bribe doctors, hospitals and officials.
But Soriot said Astra was still committed to China, where revenues rose 23% to $896 million in the first half. “There are 1.2 billion patients in China so we’re very focused on growing in that country,” he said. Overall, pre-tax profit slumped 37% to £1.5 billion as generic competition hit some of its best-selling medicines.
