Drugs giant AstraZeneca has handed its boss Pascal Soriot a pay deal worth £16.9 million and proposed changes which could lead to an even higher deal next year.

The pharmaceutical firm revealed the deal, which is predominantly long-term bonus payments, in its latest annual report.

Chief executive officer Mr Soriot was handed the sum after AstraZeneca’s profits more than doubled in 2023 strong sales of its cancer treatments.

Mr Soriot had already been the highest-paid FTSE 100 boss, after receiving a pay deal worth £15.3 million in 2022.

The latest package includes base pay of £1.43 million for the year.

He also received an annual bonus of £2.8 million and long-term incentives worth around £12.3 million, as well as other benefits.

It came as AstraZeneca also proposed a new maximum bonus of 300% of his base pay, which could see him paid up to £18.3 million.

The company said the move would put his bonus “in line with the median target bonus opportunity of his global peer group”.

A spokesman for the High Pay Centre said: “Pascal Soriot has consistently been one of the highest-paid CEOs in the FTSE 100, getting paid around a thousand times more than a minimum wage worker and over a hundred times more than many of his own employees.

“While having effective leadership is clearly necessary for managing a company the size of AstraZeneca, it’s also fair to question whether Pascal Soriot’s contribution to AstraZeneca has really been that much greater than many of his colleagues whose expertise and hard work are likely to have also played a major role in the company’s successes.”