Flitcroft quits UCI for post at AstraZeneca

COMMERCIAL lawyer Joanne Flitcroft joins AstraZeneca, boosting its in-house capability.

Flitcroft is quitting cinema chain UCI for the pharmaceutical giant. She will join an 11-strong team in the company's Cheshire office under assistant general counsel Chris Petty.

Her recruitment is the final stage in a programme of integration carried out by the company since the merger that created it last year.

The company was created last April out of the merger between Swedish company Astra AB and the UK-listed Zeneca Group.

Petty says: "When we did the merger, we did a wholesale review of our legal resource requirements, and conceded that we needed a certain number and resource of lawyers."

AstraZeneca's company lawyers are based in London under company secretary and head of legal Graeme Musker. But the bulk of its in-house lawyers concentrate on specific product areas and are based in Cheshire, Sweden and the US.