Novartis's Stealthy Headcount Reductions

Novartis has always been very, very quiet about their re-orgs and layoffs, to the point that when I and others write about them, we get hits from people at Novartis trying to find out what's going on. John Carroll at FierceBiotech has experience this as well, and he now has this story, from a reporter at the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, that says that the company has actually eliminated between 3,000 and 4,000 jobs since last fall.

That comes to about a thousand in Europe (500 of them in Basel), 760 in the US (mostly in the sales force), and 400 during the closure of Horsham in the UK. My impression is that many of the others represent various manufacturing sites. Congratulations to the Zürich newspaper's Andreas Möckli for digging all this out - it could not have been easy. Here's my translation of the introductory paragraph:

It's a proven pattern for the drug company - Novartis is built up, worldwide, from various sites, but the whole extent of its actions are never communicated. While other companies inside (and outside) the industry announce their staff reductions with concrete numbers, Novartis is often content just confirming local media reports. At its Group level, the company has never announced any job cuts, even though jobs are lost in different locations. . .

Source: In the Pipeline - March 4, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs