AstraZeneca new boss's debut buy

AstraZeneca's new boss yesterday agreed his first major deal at the pharmaceuticals giant, spending up to $272m (£169m) on the rights to an experimental kidney drug. This month, on his first day in the job, Pascal Soriot suspended Astra's share buybacks for the rest of the year.

Now the drug maker, which is suffering from key medicines running out of patent and a series of failed trials, has bought into a renal treatment, biotech Ardelyx's NHE3 inhibitor programme.