Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13429

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Mantone J.
Will 2008 Set a Pharma Layoff Record?
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog 2008 Apr 3
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/04/03/will-2008-set-a-pharma-layoff-record/?mod=WSJBlog?mod=yahoo_hs

Full text:

After Wyeth said it would cut 1,200 reps a couple of days ago, the Health Blog asked a question : Who’s next?

It didn’t take long to get an answer. Schering-Plough said yesterday that about 5,500 employees, or 10% of the company’s 55,000 headcount, have got to go. The cutback comes in the wake of the beatdown laid on cholesterol pill Vytorin at the cardiology meeting over the weekend.

“We’ve taken tough actions needed in this tough environment,” Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan said on a conference call yesterday. “We are taking control of our destiny.” As the company’s press release puts it: “The program responds to dramatically intensifying pressures on the pharmaceutical industry, especially new pressures in the United States, and also to the confusion in the U.S. market around cholesterol management that impacts the products of the Merck/Schering-Plough joint venture, Zetia and Vytorin.”

So with all the grim news coming out lately the Health Blog asks: Will Big Pharma’s 2008 reductions in force top the layoff record set last year? Even if a new benchmark is established, it may not last long. RegentAtlantic Capital, a wealth management firm, says the layoff “trend should continue for the foreseeable future.”

Garden State Layoff Bonus: New Jersey has showered incentives on drug makers to hire in the state. As layoffs mounts, a critic of the tax breaks argues: “Tying tax dollars to companies’ short-term business plans and the vagaries of industry ups and downs is a gamble the state can’t afford to keep losing. It’s time to get up from the tax break table.”