Teva Director: 'Generic Copaxone Will Come In 2015, If At All'

Last week, Teva Pharmaceuticals announced plans to accelerate a $2 billion cost-cutting plan by axing 5,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global workforce. The move reflects as the drugmaker faces generic rivals as early as next year for its all-important Copaxone multiple sclerosis treatment, which generates about half of company earnings and dominates the MS market (back story). But Teva director Chaim Hurvitz tells Globes that the cuts, which is prompting Israeli workers to consider a strike (see this), are also due to higher taxes and may not be as bad as some Israelis fear. Here is an excerpt of his interview.. On the job cuts: “I think that the drama will be less than depicted. We have almost 8,000 employees (in Israel) and 5 percent of them, 400 employees, retire every year. It's enough for us not to hire in one year, and we've solved the matter… There are places where (layoffs) this will be inevitable, but in most places it will be possible to slide over this, and stretch it over time. This is especially true at production sites… We're not going to close plants, but we'll organize production lines more efficiently." On higher taxes: “We saw two things (causing the latest announcement): greater uncertainty than this year over Copaxone and substantially higher taxes, by hundreds of millions of shekels. Trapped profits alone are NIS 500-600 million (about $140 million to $170 million. Altogether, we're talking about almost NIS 1 billion in tax hikes ($283 million) â...
Source: Pharmalot - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs