At present, with the intensification of competition in the global pharmaceutical market, pharmaceutical companies have frequently taken actions to cope with challenges, including business adjustments, divestment of non-core businesses, and a large number of personnel changes
.
Recently, the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis announced that the company plans to cut 1,400 positions in Switzerland, of which executives are also on the list, nearly half of which are leadership and management positions
.
Since the beginning of this year, Novartis has released more than one major layoff news
.
In June, Novartis made a sensational announcement that it planned to lay off 8,000 employees, about 7 percent of the company's workforce, in an effort to save at least $
1 billion by 2024.
The layoffs are understood as part of Novartis' strategic restructuring plan, which aims to secure at least 4% sales growth
by 2026.
From the perspective of the object of layoffs, Novartis has dismissed a large number of senior management positions this time, which shows that the adjustment of pharmaceutical companies behind it is accelerating
.
Novartis' strategic restructuring plan includes the integration of the Pharmaceutical and Oncology business units, in addition to layoffs
.
In the Chinese market, where it attaches great importance, the two business units of Pharmaceuticals and Oncology have been merged into one division, and Zhang Ying, President of Novartis Pharmaceuticals (China), has been appointed President and Managing Director
of Innovative Drugs China.
In addition to the Chinese region, Novartis' actions in other areas are also frequent, which can be seen that the company has made a large-scale adjustment
.
In addition to Novartis, a large number of multinational pharmaceutical companies have reported layoffs or even delisting during the
year.
For example, Ambu recently announced that as part of its cost reduction plan, the company will cut 200 employees, or 4 percent
of Ambu's workforce.
In June, it was reported that AstraZeneca China reported to the regulator a plan to "lay off 10,000 employees", accounting for 60%
of the total number of employees in China.
It is reported that the plan will be carried out in batches in the
future.
However, the relevant person in charge of AstraZeneca said that the information was not true, saying that there was no overall change in personnel at present, but it was inevitable that there would be personnel changes due to the adjustment of the business structure in the
future.
On April 8, U.
S.
-based Kaleido Biosciences announced that it would decide to immediately close down, cease all of its ongoing business, lay off all employees including the CHIEF executive officer, chief financial officer and chief strategy officer, and seek voluntary delisting
of common stock.
In March, the Danish company Orphazyme announced a restructuring that, as part of the restructuring effort, also laid off about 50% of its workforce at the end of March and was delisted
from the NASDAQ.
In addition to the above-mentioned pharmaceutical companies, since the beginning of this year, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie, Merck, Teva, Bojian and other announcements of layoffs, the proportion of layoffs has even reached 75%.
It can be said that multinational pharmaceutical companies are joining the wave of layoffs, according to incomplete statistics, in the first half of this year alone, at least more than 50 multinational pharmaceutical companies laid off employees
.
From the perspective of the reasons for layoffs, some are to eliminate the past sales methods, some are because of the failure of drug research and development pipelines, broken arms to survive to save cash flow, and some are because the company's funds are tight, in order to save operating costs, the focus on investment into advantageous business, so the decision to lay off employees was made, and there are also multinational pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca that are affected by collection and procurement, and have to accelerate frequent structural adjustments
in the Chinese market.
Overall, the current market environment for pharmaceutical companies is facing many challenges, and the industry expects that the layoffs of multinational pharmaceutical companies will intensify in
the second half of the year.
