By Maggie Fick

LONDON, July 24 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s long-time CEO Pascal Soriot has rarely put a foot wrong. The company’s shares have more that quadrupled in price during his 14-year tenure, soaring above the wider FTSE 100 index and main British rival GSK.

AstraZeneca’s huge diversity and ‌number of drugs on the market and success in clinical trials in different therapeutic areas set it apart from peers, giving Soriot the ‌golden touch in the eyes of investors.

Now, though, investors have some cause for concern after news this month of the unexpected failure of nerve drug Wainua in a late-stage heart disease trial, which ​hammered the shares and turned attention on the firm’s drug R&D…