AstraZeneca chief's £60m apology

PERCY Barnevik, the embattled chairman of drugs giant AstraZeneca, will this week deliver a dramatic public apology to shareholders over his unauthorised £60 million pension payment.

Barnevik hopes to head off a confrontation with investors at Thursday's annual meeting by saying he is sorry for the controversy over his pension windfall from ABB, the Swedish-Swiss engineering group he ran in the Nineties.

The pension was never properly approved by the ABB board. Some shareholders intend to abstain or vote against the re-election of Barnevik as chairman of the drugs company.

But it is thought that AstraZeneca's last-minute campaign to placate its biggest investors will swing the AGM in favour of the company.

Privately, some investors have been told that if Barnevik, once one of Europe's most admired industrialists, is re-elected this week, he will not stand again.

This would put an automatic one-year time limit on his chairmanship since AstraZeneca's directors have to be re-elected at every annual meeting.

A spokesman for AstraZeneca declined to comment.