ZURICH: Novartis will cut 2,550 jobs in Switzerland and Britain over four years, it said, as the Swiss drugmaker strives to boost profits and focus on new medicines.
Switzerland will bear the brunt, with 2,150 cuts planned at four factories and its Swiss-based business services unit. Some 400 jobs will also go in Grimsby, northeast England, where the company will close a plant that makes pills.
Novartis currently employs around 124,000 people worldwide. But following the planned spin-off of eye care unit Alcon in early 2019, that will fall to fewer than 100,000 people by 2022, Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said.
Novartis’s network of 66 global factories is operating below capacity after the expiry of patents on high-volume pills such as Diovan for heart disease, he added.
As the company shifts to gene therapies and biologics like arthritis treatment Cosentyx, Narasimhan said the cuts were needed to help him boost the drugs unit’s operating margin to around 35 per cent of sales, what he calls the industry standard, from 31.3 per cent now.
“Our medicines portfolio is evolving from high-volume products to more specialised and more personalised innovative medicines,” the 42-year-old US doctor told reporters. Unions blasted the move, saying the Swiss pharmaceuticals industry would be the worse for it. — Reuters
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