After months of wrangling with angry union leaders and livid government officials, the executive team at Sanofi ($SNY) has stepped back from the big R&D shakeup once threatened in France, offering to rely largely on attrition to scale back its workforce by 900 as it realigns its operations. Still undecided, though, is the fate of its workers in Toulouse, where "potential stakeholders" have been identified who "could maintain the site's scientific or technological capacity."
Staffers in Montpelier, once threatened with the budget ax, will now help the facility "evolve" into a strategic development center while its Strasbourg site is expected to continue to build collaborations with academic groups and biotechs. And instead of handing out pink slips, Sanofi chief Chris Viehbacher says the pharma giant will rely on early retirement and job repositioning to bring down staff levels in France.
Sanofi isn't just cutting back in France. The pharma company also spelled out plans to boost R&D in Vitry/Alfortville and Chilly-Mazarin/Longjumeau while a new center on infectious diseases will be created in Lyon. Conversations over the future of Toulouse will continue in the weeks ahead.
French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, who had personally scolded Viehbacher for pushing layoffs at a time the company has been reporting healthy profits, claimed a victory today, telling reporters that the company had reduced its targeted layoffs from 2,300 to 1,370. And he's still agitating for an even smaller number.
"After a meeting with the CEO, whom I saw again last night, I explained that this layoff plan was abusive and that it needed to be reduced, which has been done in two waves," he said, according to a report from Reuters.
Viechbacher, though, has been following a path on R&D restructuring already blazed by some of his giant rivals in the field. Roche ($RHHBY), Pfizer ($PFE), Merck KGaA and others all been shuttering some of the world's oldest drug complexes while relocating work to key global biotech centers around the world. And the CEO hasn't been afraid to spell out his own frustrations about the poor productivity of the French R&D operation. He recently told reporters that the French group hadn't produced an important new drug in 20 years. Cutbacks in France are coming as Sanofi beefs up its work in Boston, home to one of the world's most thriving biotech hubs.
That position hasn't won Viehbacher any friends in the unions, which plan to go ahead with a strike on Oct. 3 as they protest the possibility of deeper cuts ahead in Toulouse.
- here's the press release
- read the story from Reuters