Two years after announcing plans to eliminate more than 10,000 jobs, AstraZeneca is reportedly set to shed thousands more when the drugmaker announces earnings later this week, according to a report in The Sunday Times that cited securities analysts. We asked an AstraZeneca spokesman about the report, but he declined to comment on what he called 'market speculation.'
Such a move underscores the difficulty that AstraZeneca braces itself for looming patent expirations on some of its biggest sellers, notably the Crestor cholesterol pill, the Nexium acid reflux med and the Seroquel antipsychotic. In recent weeks, the drugmaker disclosed plans to eliminate 400 jobs in its commercial business and US headquarters, and another 1,150 jobs from the US sales force (see here).
Last month, AstraZeneca US president Rich Fante described those cuts as part of an ongoing ’second phase’ of restructuring that began in January 2010. At the time, the drugmaker indicated plans to reduce its overall headcount by 10,400 jobs (see slide 103 of this slide show), although the most recent round of jobs cuts are on top of that forecast. The next round of cuts would reportedly come on top of earlier layoffs.
Between 2007 and 2009, AstraZeneca eliminated 12,600 positions, a move that saved $1.6 billion annually, although that figure rose to $2.4 billion by 2010. The cuts announced that year were designed to save $1.9 billion annually by 2014 (read here). It is not clear how much the drugmaker hopes to save with still more cuts, but some $3 billion may be spent on a stock buyback to bolster shareholder confidence, according to the Sunday Times.
axe pic thx to brittgow on flickr
5 Comments
Ed, your AZ spokesman perhaps forgot to pick up yesterday's Sunday Times of London. Not a paper to engage in "market speculation". Subscription costs $12/month for online digital edition. Maybe AZ isn't picking up the cost with all of their cutbacks.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/article2171335.ece
This is a mistake for all these companies. Pharma is doing this for all the wrong reasons ... basically they just want ot downsize. But they made this mistake in the early 1990s ... they were going to reach docs, pharmacists, and other health care professionals vis DVDs, and other new fledgling electronic delivery mechanisms (eg, 3.5" floppies ... you get the picture. Well this failed because docs and pharmacists and NPs and others prefer professional relationships the most. RELATIONSHIPS. Not electronic delivery and not overly aggressive sales tactics ... we know what the drugs do or are porported to do, just fill-in the blanks. But pharma doesn't get this. They are destroying important relationships that electronics and social media are not going to replace. This will hurt them in the future. Social media? Social media has been important for pharma for years, as a matter of fact on of the largest studies of social relationships was done in the 1940s on docs and their prescribing habits ... read about it ... it's landmark sociology. But todays instant social networks are not the same ... they are annouying to many especially busy health care professionals who are worrying about their facebook page or twitter account when they're encountering patients AND when they have down time. Do you really think they want to friend Pfizer? Or some "collegue" who is going schilling for Pfizer? No way!
yo, you are right, physician's prefer human relationships to e-detailing. With that notion has come the armies of caterers disguised as drug reps, and before long it was just "hold the detail piece and pass the potato salad."
Roger Waters described today's doctors' attitude towards drug reps:
"WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION; WE DON'T NEED NO THOUGHT CONTROL"
To original industry insider- Physicians and their ever hungry staff dominate to the industry they bring food just to spend any amount of quality time with the physician. The pharma industry would have preferred not to become glorified caterers, but most offices demand it, and pizzas don't make the cut who demand high quality food. Throwing the excuse that pharma created this catering problem means you never got away from your high powered HQ job to know who was making these demands on the industry. Doctors have been dictating for years the amount of time pharma could spend on quality calls. Pharma listened to the management consultants in the 90's who pushed share of voice and numbers of reps. Pharma decided to hire entry level reps. for a job that required some maturity and education. The whole industry got turned upside down in less than 20 years. And it will never go back to the job that it was when I started where providing a lunch to an office was the exception, not the rule. Also, patent expiration is dictating the loss of pharma jobs, not a mass social media marketing focus. That will never replace the value of relationships in any sales industry.
It also appears that an inside sales channel AZ started down in Florida has been Over-Exaggeration program results (to say the least). The company is TMS Health out of Boca Raton,Fl and were recently bought by ACS out of Texas. This inside sales channel started with Toprol then added other brands such as the Gastro blockbuster Nexium then Symbicort, Vimovo and most recently Brilinta. From what has been reported is that TMS Health/ACS have been falsely reporting performance metrics to Astra Zeneca which are recorded daily. These metrics include but not limited to--Dr, NP and PA acquisition, accounts detailed each day and time in front of the clients. This information has been reported by former and current employees of TMS Health/ACS. From what we hear is that this started way back with Toprol and continued through Nexium then onto the muti-brand segment of the program. One of the floor managers which is still there once said that "AZ is our ATM...we need to keep the numbers looking real good". Wow, mind you, most of the middle and upper management at TMS Health/ACS have no real Pharma experience. They had 1 trainer that had significant Pharma experience but that person is no longer with TMS Health/ACS. I guess this is a case of greasy phone room company pulling the wool over the eyes of a Big Pharma client. We all knew about telemarketers were of a shady lot.