PERHAPS UNSURPRISINGLY for the boss of a pharmaceutical company, Sir Pascal Soriot is a big believer in science. As chief executive of AstraZeneca, a drugmaking powerhouse, he has sacrificed immediate returns to shareholders—buybacks ceased entirely between 2013 and 2021—to plough cash back into new discoveries. The company has invested more than £1bn ($1.3bn) in its headquarters in Cambridge, England, strengthening its ties to world-class scientists and creating Europe’s biggest life-sciences hub. His faith has paid off handsomely. Since the early 2010s AstraZeneca has gone from a company in poor health with an anaemic pipeline of blockbuster drugs to one that has doubled in size in five years.