Pfizer's vows fall on deaf ears in Cambridge

The scientists in Cambridge, U.K., have heard this one before. Pfizer ($PFE), as part of its plodding effort to win over national leaders with its plan to buy AstraZeneca ($AZN) for more than $100 billion, has promised to preserve jobs in the country and talked up the value of British science. But the local academic community has long seen giants buy in, take what they need and cut what they don't want. As Bloomberg reports, leaders from the city's eponymous university, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Babraham Institute, Cancer Research UK and others have little faith in Pfizer's promise to keep 20% of its R&D workforce in the country for 5 years. "There is a lot of history of foreign and British companies buying Cambridge companies," said Jeanette Walker, project director of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. "If you just look at the number of transactions, it's probably true to say that when a Cambridge drug company is acquired, it results in closure rather than in investment." More