Pascal Soriot started as CEO of AstraZeneca in 2012, joining from a long career in the pharmaceutical industry, with stints as an executive at Roche and the biotech Genentech, where he led its acquisition by Roche.
Soriot, who trained as a veterinarian and also has an MBA, notoriously fended off a nearly $120 billion takeover by Pfizerin 2014, aiming to turn the company around on his own instead.
On pay, we'll leave it to Soriot to tell it in his own words.
"The truth is I'm the lowest-paid CEO in the whole industry," he told The Times of London last fall. "You know, it is annoying to some extent. But at the end of the day, it is what it is.
"I am not going to complain, but me and Emma [Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline] are the lowest paid in Europe and the US."
AstraZeneca's market cap: $50 billion