● “Pascal Soriot [pictured] would have been forgiven for waving a big ‘I told you so’ sign, says Lex in the Financial Times. The AstraZeneca CEO set a target of reaching $45bn in annual sales by 2023 when he fended off a takeover from Pfizer a decade ago. That once seemed out of reach, but in February, the firm hit it. Now Soriot has a new challenge to persuade “investors that AstraZeneca’s best days are not behind it”. The pipeline is much stronger than it was a decade ago, with 178 prospects at various stages of development. Yet the shares trades at a similar multiple to European peers.
“Another long-term revenue target might help crystallise what he thinks AstraZeneca is capable of.”
● International Paper “appears to have boxed itself in”, says Aimee Donnellan on Breakingviews. The US packaging group wants to buy British rival DS Smith, which had already agreed to merge with peer Mondi in a deal that valued it at $6.5bn. International Paper’s all-shares bid was initially worth $7.2bn, but after a sell-off in its shares when the news broke, it barely offers a premium to the Mondi deal. DS Smith’s shareholders “have good reasons to stick with Mondi”: the combination would create a European giant that could deliver up to $500m in cost savings annually. International Paper has “fewer goodies to promise”, since cost synergies are probably smaller, while a shift to a US
