Glaxo Continues to Remain Tight-lipped About Looming Job Cuts
Many people, most notably GlaxoSmithKline employees, assumed that GSK management would disclose at its earning call yesterday how many people would lose their jobs in the company’s next round of job cuts announced earlier this week. Surprisingly, management decided not to announce the breadth and depth of layoffs ostensibly increasing the drama and anxiety of its employees about the cuts.
Management’s decision not to disclose the number of employees who would lose their jobs after publicly announced that it would cut up to 4,000 jobs means one of two things according to Jim Edwards of the BNET blog.
“Either that GSK itself has not finished calculating it; or that management believes there’s some sort of PR advantage to not actually saying out loud what everyone already knows.”
Based on public statements made by GSK spokespeople, Edwards has identified several vulnerable areas where jobs are likely to be cut. These include R&D across the board and one therapeutic area, neuroscience. According to bloggers and insiders who leaked information to the public, the asthma drug Advair may be at risk, as well as metabolic disease product development and sales representatives. Also, there will be reporting structure changes and less emphasis will be place on new product launches in the US. The recent decision to not seek US regulatory approval for GSK’s new, pneumococcal vaccine Synflorix, despite garnering EU approval tends to substantiate this idea.
Elimination of neuroscience as a therapeutic area of interest for GSK was clearly enunciated when the company mentioned during the earnings call
“Today, we have announced proposals to cease discovery research in selected neuroscience areas, including depression and pain.”
Today, GSK announced that it would close a research center in Verona Italy that specializes in neuroscience research. Approximately 500 workers will lose their jobs after the facility is closed. Unions representing the Italian workers also disclosed in an e-mail message that six facilities worldwide besides Verona will also be closed by GSK.
Less obvious, but clearly written between the lines was the statement made about R&D.
"We have ‘externalised’ approximately 30% of GSK’s discovery research. We are already conducting discovery research with 47 external partners. Our goal is to further increase the level of externally sourced compounds in our pipeline …"
"… We are also looking to reduce R&D infrastructure costs."
Perhaps what may be most troubling to GSK employees who ultimately lose their jobs is the $900 million or more spent on legal fees over the past year. GSK didn’t disclose why the company had incurred such enormous legal bills.
The recent spate of layouts doesn’t mean that any big pharma companies are in financial trouble. As previously mentioned, most of the layoffs are based on future economic predictions and projections which may or may not be realized. Companies are cutting staff and implementing cost savings measures simply to bolster their stock prices and give investors their expected ROI. The economic downturn has provided pharma companies with excellent cover to downsize at will without anybody asking any tough questions. While I feel the pain of workers who have either lost or soon will lose their jobs, the downsizing taking place over the past three years has been a long time in the making. I suspect that many well paid veteran employees turned a blind eye to the internal changes and cues that may have signaled their ultimate demise.
While downsizing will likely have its anticipated short term effects i.e. bolster flagging stock share prices, it will ultimately hurt the future economic prospects of most big pharma companies. This is because pharma companies will lose many of the talented and experienced workers whose previous hard work and sacrifices contributed to their past successes. When are the overpaid pharma executives going to realize that it is the rank and file, not them that bring creativity, innovation and ultimately financial rewards to their stakeholders?
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!
While I never was involved in a corporate acquisition or merger, I have many friends who have lived through them and based on their experiences it is a never a “pretty sight.” Merger aftermaths usually feature massive layoffs, executive management disputes and turf wars and corporate culture clashes tha occur when two workforces are forced to merge as one. However, sometimes mergers may be a good thing for struggling companies. To that end, Pfizer
Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse for New Jersey, Merck and Pfizer 

After
Employees of Pfizer/Wyeth were notified earlier today of impending changes and consolidation that will be taking place at the newly combined company. According to internal sources, Cambridge, MA, Groton, CT and Pearl River, NY will be the main centers of the combined company’s East Coast operations and San Francisco and La Jolla/San Diego CA will represent West Coast operations. In Europe, the research facility in Sandwich, England will be the main R&D center with a network of smaller sites, in locations such as Montreal, Ottawa, Cambridge UK, Aberdeen UK, and Dusseldorf, Germany providing expertise in vaccine production and biomanufacturing. The company’s China R&D Center in Shanghai will remain the focal point of operations in Asia,
I suspect by the growing numbers of people who read BioJobBlog, that some of you may be beginning to wonder who I am. While nobody has taken me to task about my credentials or musings to date, I figured it may be worthwhile to share my “story” with those BioJobBlog readers who may be at a crossroads in their careers. I credit my graduate school experiences and PhD degree for the tenacity, perseverance and the ability to reinvent myself during an eclectic, and oft times, circuitous career path.
I was sitting around minding my own business (well sort of) and I received the following e-mail message. People must be reading BioJobBlog or something!
I received a call today from GDS International, a UK-based b2b publishing company, alerting me to its annual, event called the 

Eli Lilly & Co. is
Yesterday,
It’s no secret that major pharmaceutical companies are
The drug maker Eli Lilly and Co
As many of you may know, I attend national science meetings where I offer resume critiquing services and give career development seminars on topics ranging from resume writing to alternate career opportunities for life scientists. Frequently, I critique the resumes of
By now, I think that most BioJobBlog readers understand that the job market for life scientists is lousy and that it isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. I know that many of you have spent close to 10 years training for a shot at an R&D job but the reality is that everybody needs to work to put food on the table—whether or not you find a job in your chosen profession. To that end, now may be a good time for those of you who are finding it difficult to land a job to consider one more year of training to get a certificate in a field that keeps you in science but not in R&D.
Over the past three years, more than.jpg)
Did you know that the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world spent close to $50 billion dollars last year on R&D? That sum could be used to purchase the entire US biotechnology industry except for the five largest companies—Genentech, Amgen, Gilead Genzyme and Celgene. Further, pharma’s R&D budget is about 4 times the R&D budget of all of the US biotechnology companies combined. According to a
For those of you who haven’t been able to keep up with the latest pharma layoffs, I came across an
Over the past few weeks, the blogosphere was rife with rumors and speculation that Pfizer would be laying off additional R&D personnel in December. However, it seems that the layoffs have been
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).
The Pharmalot blog reported yesterday that
According to the WSJ Health Blog “Wyeth is overhauling its early-stage research by slashing in half the number of therapeutic areas and diseases for which it will pursue new medicines. The idea is to concentrate on more innovative products and get them to market faster.” Whenever large companies restructure or announce reorganization plans, job cuts are soon to follow. So, if you are a Wyeth employee I recommend updating that resume as soon as possible!.jpg)
The
Genzyme announced today


