Jeff Kindler beckons from the far side of the boardroom table and gestures towards the empty seat next to him. “Come and sit over here,” he says, glancing mischievously at his head of communications. “Ray won’t like it because he can’t kick me under the table.”

The chief executive of Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceuticals company in terms of sales, relaxes as he slips off the jacket he was advised to put on for photographs, looking more at ease once restored to his shirt-sleeves: informal, engaging and ready for business.