AstraZeneca, run by Pascal Soriot, its longtime chief executive, had been worth nearly £196bn before the news broke. That pushed AstraZeneca’s value down to about £178bn, as it lost the title of the second-biggest listed company in the UK to Shell. “On balance, BMS shareholders would be the winners of any combination with AstraZeneca and so this news will undoubtedly be received coolly by AstraZeneca shareholders,” she told Reuters. AstraZeneca, headquartered in Cambridge, England, was formed in 1999 from the merger of the Swedish company Astra AB and the UK company Zeneca Group. Under Soriot, the company fended off a hostile bid from its US rival Pfizer in 2014 that valued AstraZeneca at almost £70bn.