Here’s how Sir Andrew Witty, who is due to end an eight-year tenure as the chief executive of British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, would like to be remembered: in his shirtsleeves, in sub-Saharan Africa, meeting with impoverished villagers and then persuading first-world politicians of the need for drugs in the developing world. As the chief executive whose company developed a malaria vaccine and was first to test a vaccine for the Ebola virus. As the ethical exec who stopped paying doctors what were essentially bribes to talk up drugs. As the pharma boss who managed to stabilize a drug giant without a big, destructive merger.
