AstraZeneca
has said it is to cut around 1,150 sales jobs in the US - accounting for almost
a quarter of its American field force - as part of an ongoing cost-cutting
programme. "These
are difficult decisions that impact valued employees. The changes we are
making, however, will help us deliver better results for our business,"
commented Rich Fante, president of AstraZeneca US.
The
company's cuts focus on "leadership and sales-representative
positions" and are in addition to the 400 US job losses announced in October and the 8,000
set to go over the coming years as a result of a worldwide restructuring announced in
January 2010.
Like
many of its peers in the pharmaceutical sector, AstraZeneca is facing a patent
cliff in the coming years, with generic competition looming for some
top-earning products in the US, including blood pressure drug Atacand
(candesartan cilexetil), schizophrenia drug Seroquel (quetiapine) and
gastrointestinal treatment Nexium (esomeprazole).
Some
products, including blood pressure drug Toprol XL/Seloken (metoprolol) and
Arimidex (anastrozole) for breast cancer, are already being impacted by copycat
drugs and the firm lost $350m in revenues to generic competition in the third
quarter of this year alone. However,
its latest move also ties in with a well-established trend among pharma
companies to reduce numbers of traditional sales reps, in response to a
progressive decline in access to healthcare practitioners and a rise in the importance
of other stakeholders such as managed care systems, pharmacy benefit managers,
and physician consortia.
At
the same time, industry-imposed compliance rules and regulatory scrutiny of
sales and marketing practices have been driving a shift away a conventional
detailing approach to sales - which requires considerable manpower - to one of
key account management (KAM) and targeting of select prescribing decision
makers. The
impact of the latest round of cuts at AstraZeneca will vary geographically and
by selling teams, said the company, but employees will have the "option to
self-identify to potentially leave the company".
Decisions
on the staffing reductions will be completed by February 2012, and the costs of
the latest round of restructuring will be in the $50m-$100m range, it added. However,
shares are getting a boost on the restructuring news.
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