Drugs giant AstraZeneca chooses Renault boss as new chairman

Louis Schweitzer, the chief executive of the French car maker Renault, is to be the next chairman of AstraZeneca, Britain's number two pharmaceuticals company.

His appointment means he will step back next April from day-to-day running of the car company whose privatisation he led in 1996, in favour of Carlos Ghosn, the head of the Japanese car maker Nissan, which was bought by Renault in 1999.

M. Schweitzer, 61, replaces Percy Barnevik, the Swede who oversaw the merger of Astra and Zeneca in 1999, and who will leave later this year after more than five years in the post.

AstraZeneca also said yesterday that Sir Tom McKillop, the chief executive, had agreed to stay on beyond March 2005, when he would have reached the company's normal retirement age of 62. The board has decided that changing the holders of the two top posts within a year would be damaging, but M. Schweitzer will have to turn his thoughts to planning a successor for Sir Tom when he is established as chairman.

John Lawson, a car industry analyst at Citigroup, said M. Schweitzer had proved himself an adept manager at Renault. "He has made running a car company look rather easy. You know you are in the presence of a considerable intellect, a product of the Grands Ecoles."

Mr Barnevik has signalled his intention to retire, having survived in the post in 2002 during the storm over his self-approved pension pay-out from ABB. He was forced to hand back £37m of his £61m retirement bonanza to the Swiss-Swedish engineer he retired from in 1996.