Major self-funded management share buying is a relative rarity in the FTSE 100, where reward schemes and vesting bonuses tend to dominate the newsflow. So news that AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot had purchased 60,000 shares in the pharma heavyweight at 12,102p apiece raised a few eyebrows, particularly given an aggregate price tag of nearly £7.3mn.

It is certainly a statement of intent at a time when market confidence in the company’s underlying prospects has started to wobble after a difficult summer. Indeed, the shares are down about 8 per cent since the start of the year, and AstraZeneca has been struggling to seize control of the narrative.

The cause of this slump was an uncharacteristically underwhelming series of clinical trial results, unusual for a company latterly known for its tightly designed and well-managed clinical programme. The most significant was the surprise failure in phase 3 trials of heart drug Wainua, which had attracted plenty of positive comment before the results. The delay of breast cancer pill Camizestrant by a US regulatory panel on trial-design grounds, as well as the separate trial failure of rare disease drug Ultomiris, has also affected sentiment.