Sanofi Aventis Announces New Layoffs
Despite a lull in layoffs over the past summer, this fall is shaping up to another bad one for pharmaceutical employees. Late last week Novartis announced that it was laying off about 2,000 employees. Prior to the Novartis announcement, Amgen, AstraZeneca, and Merck have all disclosed plans to eliminate thousands of jobs on a worldwide basis. To add insult to injury, Sanofi Aventis told its employees today that the company would be shifting operations from New Jersey to Massachusetts and that hundred of employees would be losing their jobs. While a Sanofi spokesperson refused to specify the exact number of employees who may lose their jobs, estimates are in the hundreds, mainly in R&D and sales in the oncology and cardiovascular areas.
The announcement was not unexpected because several weeks ago the company announced that it would cut another $2.9 billion in costs to offset pending generic encroachment on its top selling medications Plavix and Avapro. Further, consolidation of Sanofi’s R&D operations and its early development work to the Boston area is mainly a result of its acquisition of Genzyme earlier this year. To that end, later-stage development work will remain at Sanofi’s headquarters in Bridgewater, NJ while pharmaceutical R&D, Sanofi Pasteur biologics and global oncology has already been moved to Massachusetts. At present, Sanofi employs about 3,000 people in New Jersey and 5,000 in Massachusetts (including Genzyme employees).
Interestingly, while job cuts are taking place in western markets, hiring is brisk in emerging like China and India. For example, several months ago Pfizer announced that it was closing down its antibiotic discovery program in the US and moving it to China. Likewise, Novartis plans on sending some medicinal chemistry and regulatory work overseas to India. If the downsizing and outsourcing trends continue at their current pace, it will become increasingly difficult for most Americans to find pharmaceutical R&D jobs in the US. Can anybody still wonder why we may be losing ground to countries like India and China?
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!
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