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Ian Read

British businessman

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ1655624
Source-derived summary

Ian C. Read (born 1953) is a Scottish business executive and a chartered accountant, who is executive chairman of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. He was succeeded as CEO by Albert Bourla on 1 January 2019, becoming executive chairman.

Early life

Read was born in Forfar, Scotland, to a Scottish mother, but his parents returned to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when he was six-weeks-old, and he grew up there.

Read received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of London in 1974. He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1978.

Career

Read has spent his entire career with Pfizer, starting in 1978 as an operational auditor. He worked in Latin America through 1995, holding positions ranging from CFO of Pfizer Mexico (Pfizer's largest subsidiary in Latin America) to country manager of Brazil. In 1996, he was appointed president of the Pfizer International Pharmaceuticals Group, Latin America/Canada. He assumed the position of executive vice president—Europe/Canada in May 2000, added the responsibilities for Africa/Middle East region as of January 2004 and responsibilities for Latin America in March 2006. He was named vice president of Pfizer in 2001 and promoted to president of worldwide pharmaceutical operations in 2006.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ian Read” is british businessman. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Read, British and businessman, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 2019, 1974, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1953-01-01. For this dossier, Read, British and businessman is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british businessman” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1655624. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2019, 1974 and 1978.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Ian Read primary sources, Ian Read archive and Read research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Ian Read” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.