Who Founded AstraZeneca?

Sir David Barnes was chief executive of Zeneca Group plc, the company created when Imperial Chemical Industries demerged its pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and specialty chemicals businesses in 1993, and he led the Zeneca side of the negotiations that produced AstraZeneca. The boards of Astra and Zeneca agreed terms for an all-share merger of equals on 9 December 1998 and the deal completed on 6 April 1999, with Zeneca shareholders holding 53.5% of the new company and Astra shareholders 46.5%. Barnes became deputy chairman of AstraZeneca after the merger. In 2014 he publicly opposed Pfizer's approach for the company, arguing the proposal was built on financial engineering rather than science. He died in 2020. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Håkan Mogren was chief executive of Astra AB and negotiated the Swedish side of the 1999 merger with Zeneca Group alongside Sir David Barnes. Astra had grown into Scandinavia's largest pharmaceutical company on the strength of Losec (omeprazole), the proton pump inhibitor its researchers discovered, which became the best-selling medicine in the world in the 1990s. Mogren became non-executive deputy chairman of AstraZeneca after the merger and served on the board until 2009. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).