AZN’s outgoing CEO prompts question: what makes a good pharma CEO?

David Brennan’s move to retire as AstraZeneca’s CEO in June did not come as a surprise to those who had been urging for a change at the top over the company’s drug development shortcomings. In an industry that walks a tightrope between innovation and regulation and the financial considerations that frame them, there are two critical characteristics that can undermine a CEO: being too bold or not bold enough. Brennan was a bit of both.