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However, when Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, promoted Scottish-born Ian C Read to its top job, it's arguable that Witty lost the distinction. Unlike Witty, who also spent some of his career in the US, Read now has US citizenship.

The move caps a steady but remarkable ascent for Read, who joined Pfizer four years after graduating with a science degree from Imperial College in London in 1974. He also qualified as a chartered accountant. Pfizer's shareholders, who have had to stomach a 35pc decline in the company's share price over the past four years, will want to know how Read can blend spreadsheets and science into a brew that puts the share price back on track.

Being described as someone with a long relationship with drugs is not usually a compliment, but the analysts covering Pfizer seized on his experience as a virtue. "I think Ian will be able to talk more deeply and coherently about Pfizer given his many years of experience and his long background in the drug industry," said Tim Anderson, at Sanford C Bernstein.

Read will need to be able to communicate with the analysts: next year Pfizer loses patent protection in the US on its blockbuster Lipitor; it is still integrating its acquisition of rival Wyeth last year, and a robust recovery in developed economies remains far from guaranteed.

As well as being two of the most powerful men in the industry, the careers of Read and Witty have taken them to the growing markets that both companies need to find customers in.

For Witty, it was Africa and Asia. Read's odyssey took him to Mexico, Brazil and then Europe. It's something that Pfizer's board used to explain the promotion of Read, who for the past four years has run the company's global biopharmaceuticals business, which generates 85pc of sales and employs 40,000 people. If he can pull off further expansion in markets such as China, the board's reasoning is likely to be warmly welcomed.

And the 55 year-old takes the helm with his eyes wide open about the non-stop demands of the job. He only needs ask his predecessor.

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Mr Kindler, who has been chief executive since 2006, said that "the combination of meeting the requirements of our many stakeholders around the world and the 24/7 nature of my responsibilities, has made this period extremely demanding on me personally".

He will be succeeded by Ian C Read, who at 57 is two years older than Mr Kindler and has headed Pfizer's biopharmaceuticals business for the past four years.

Mr Kindler faced a challenging time at the top of Pfizer, taking over shortly before the company stopped work on the development of the cholesterol drug Torcetrapib. The company, which has 4,500 employees in the UK, had hoped that the drug would be another blockbuster and help compensate for next year's loss of patent protection on Lipitor in the US. Shares in Pfizer, which were up 18 cents at $16.90 in early afternoon trading in New York, slumped 35pc during Mr Kindler's tenure.

"The departure is sudden but I doubt there was one event per se that caused Mr Kindler's retirement," said Tim Anderson, an analyst at Sanford C Bernstein.

Like much of corporate America since the financial crisis, Pfizer has cut costs in an effort to help sustain profits. Under Mr Kindler stewardship, the company has shed more than 14,000 jobs, as well as closing manufacturing plants. The company also paid $68bn (￡43bn) for rival Wyeth last year in an effort to invigorate its pipeline of new products.

Barbara Ryan, who covers the company for Deutsche Bank, said that Mr Kindler should be credited with "digging Pfizer out of a hole". However, his retirement "suggests that Pfizer's leadership, including Mr Kindler, believe it was best for him to move on now in a way that would not jeopardise or disrupt what he was able to achieve strategically over the past four years".

Analysts say the challenge facing Mr Read, who has been with Pfizer since 1978 after joining its accounts department, is to find new, innovative medicines as well as push the company more aggressively into emerging markets.

Current drugs in development include tasocitinib for rheumatoid arthritis and crizotinib, which is designed to treat lung cancer.

The geographical priorities, again echoing those of many of America's biggest companies, should be China, India, Brazil and Latin America, said analysts at Credit Agricole. That's a long way from Pfizer's roots, which lay in the New York borough of Brooklyn, where two cousins – Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart – founded the company in 1849.

Mr Read welcomed the opportunity to lead a company on the "front lines of medical innovation".

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