Few industry insiders forgive Dr Mogren, a biochemist by training, for his food industry background, which they regard as inadequate preparation to run a drug company.A recent survey of Swedish analysts found that 88 per cent believed that Astra's share price would rise if Dr Mogren left. His supporters counter that the opera-loving chief executive with a passion for food and wine is simply too colourful for the stuffy Swedish corporate world. Dr Mogren, a former top manager at Maribou, Scandinavia's leading chocolate maker, has been at Astra's helm for almost 10 years and was one of the architects of the Zeneca deal.Despite being widely credited as the man who turned Losec into a best- seller, Dr Mogren has few friends among the analysts and press, who accuse of him of being aloof and uncommunicative, and bemoan what they see as his lavish lifestyle. Investor, the Wallenbergs' investment vehicle, is Astra's largest shareholder - a position which it will retain in AstraZeneca. The merger will do little to dilute the Wallenbergs' grip on the company, with Percy Barnevik, the respected head of Investor set to become chairman of the new group.But it is Hakan Mogren, the executive deputy chairman of AstraZeneca, who is the key link between the family and Astra. In the event, the company proved that tumours in some of the rats in the trials were not caused by Losec, but the whole episode caused a long delay in the development of the drug.More recently, Astra has had to wait longer than expected for the US approval of its asthma drug Pulmicourt, because, as one insider put it "it had not anticipated the American authorities' questions".Outside the pharmaceutical world, Astra has been linked to a sexual harassment scandal in the US, which saw the departure of one of its top executives, although the company has always rebutted all the allegations.Throughout this mixed history, the company's fate has been inextricably linked to the Wallenbergs, whose empire spans most of Sweden's blue-chips, including ABB, Saab, Electrolux and Ericsson.

The company has suffered a series of setbacks in bringing its products to the market in the recent past. The biggest scare of all came in the early 1980s, when Astra was forced to halt pre-clinical studies of its blockbuster-to-be Losec because of fears that it might cause cancer. There is a handful of products in there but nothing will ever come near Losec. Astra's prospects before the merger looked very very poor," one industry expert said.Astra's other weak point, according to industry insiders, is in drug development. With Losec starting to lose patent protection in 2001, Astra was increasingly seen by analysts as a lame duck in desperate need of a partner."Their drug pipeline is weak.

As a result, it found itself hostage to the success of its anti-ulcer drug, which now accounts for almost half of its annual turnover of SKr44.9bn (pounds 3.4bn) ( see table). The company was unable to discover "medium-sales" drugs which could support and balance out Losec's dominance. The medicine, widely considered to be the best treatment for gastric acid, had a tremendous success, becoming the world's best selling prescription drug within six years, with yearly sales of over pounds 1.6bn.But Losec's triumph was to prove Astra's biggest headache. Its first blockbuster came in 1948 in the form of Xylocaine, a local anaesthetic. The drugs' burgeoning sales triggered the first giant leap in Astra's growth as the company branched out in the rest of Europe, Australia and Latin America.The Xylocaine experience was repeated on a bigger scale almost 30 years later in 1988, when the company launched Losec, its anti-ulcer drug. From a pharmaceutical standpoint, Astra has always been plagued by the label of "one-drug wonder".