Sir David Barnes

Barnes spent his career at Imperial Chemical Industries before its 1993 demerger, working in the pharmaceuticals side of the business, and became the first chief executive of the separately listed Zeneca Group. Tom McKillop, who ran Zeneca pharmaceuticals, was named chief executive designate in May 1998 and went on to lead the merged AstraZeneca, while Barnes moved to the deputy chairmanship.

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).