When Roche originally swooped in to acquire all of Genentech, the pharma giant was careful to leave the company's compensation system intact. But when 2011 rolls around, things may change a little.
Roche CEO Severin Schwan says that reviewing Genentech's pay packages--long the envy of the biotech world--will become one of his top priorities in 2010, according to a report in the Financial Times. In the brave new world ahead Schwan said that he expects that the pay at Genentech will be more incentive-based than in the rest of the company. And the workers in the biotech arm will get a higher percentage of their pay in long-term stock options. The new pay deal, he says, will have to be more "entrepreneurial."
Message to Roche employees: Don't look for a similar deal.
"If you want a person who always plays it safe, probably they should not work for Genentech," said Schwan. "But I think it would be wrong to import the US system to the rest of the world."
- read the story in the Financial Times