Big Changes In Store For Amgen Employees?
Remember when Amgen was the world’s largest and most profitable biotechnology company? That was way back in 2006 before its marketing and sales team got in trouble for “pushing” the sale of its erythropoietin (EPO) product Epogen and Aranesp beyond acceptable patient safety limits. This, along with a relatively thin new drug pipeline, has for the past five years or so relegated the company to second tier biotech company status.
To make matter worse, a company spokesperson mentioned its third-quarter earnings conference call today that the company is
“...currently evaluating some changes within our Research & Development organization to improve focus and to reallocate resources to key pipeline assets and activities." This typically means that the possibility of layoffs is real. The last major restructuring of the company took place in 2007 and it resulted in the elimination of more than 2,000 jobs worldwide, including about 700 in Thousand Oaks.
This past June, Amgen announced plans to eliminate 134 jobs at two of its manufacturing sites in Colorado.
The company employs about 17,000 people, including about 6,200 in Thousand Oaks. Amgen also has research and development facilities in Thousand Oaks, South San Francisco,; Cambridge and Woburn, Mass.; Seattle; Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada; Abingdon, Cambridge and Uxbridge, Great Britain; and Regensburg, Germany.
In 2010, Amgen's revenue totaled $15.1 billion, while research and development cost $2.9 billion, according to the company. Its net profit last year totaled $4.63 billion, up slightly less than 1 percent from 2009.
Could this signal the beginning of the end of this once formidable biotechnology giant? If I was an Amgen employee I would be feverishly updating my CV right about now!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!
Pfizer 
ou all know by now, American pharmaceutical companies have been intermittently laying off thousands of employees for the past two years or so. Many of the employees who have lost their jobs are R& D scientists, marketing personnel and sales representatives. This seemingly makes sense—because fewer drugs are being discovered and brought to market, fewer people are required to market and sell them. That said, isn’t discovering new drugs the currency and lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry? How do these companies plan to stay in business if they continue to layoff employees who are seemingly responsible for developing new sources of revenue for them? Taking their cues from the IT and software industries, many US drug makers are beginning to either transfer R&D operations to foreign, company-owned research facilities or outsourcing some or all R&D activities to foreign contract research organizations (CROs).
Over the past few days, many drug companies have been reporting their earnings for the first quarter of 2008. Few, if any,
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