Novartis International AG, a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, will cut around 2,550 jobs in Switzerland and UK over the next 4 years as the pharmaceutical firm is planning to boost its revenue and focus on new medicines.
It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies by both market capitalization and sales.
The Swiss drugmaker has decided to cut around 2,150 jobs at four factories and business service unit in Switzerland. It is also planning to close a plant in Grimsby, northeast England, due to which around 400 people will lose their jobs.
Novartis currently employs around 124,000 people worldwide. But following the planned spin-off of eyecare unit Alcon in early 2019, that will fall to fewer than 100,000 people by 2022, Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said.
“Novartis has been a part of the Grimsby community for many years so this has been a very difficult decision.
“The Grimsby site is an effective, well-running operation that is a testament to the hardworking and dedicated employees. We will treat every employee with the utmost respect, sensitivity, and fairness during this difficult time,” said Haseeb Ahmad, Novartis UK country president.
Narasimhan, whose company’s net income rose 15 percent last year to $7.7 billion, is seeking to transform Novartis from a traditional pills maker to a maker of cutting-edge therapies like its $475,000-per-patient Kymriah cancer treatment.
Novartis’s restructuring comes as part of a program announced in 2016 to save about $1 billion annually, Narasimhan said. Previous moves have included closing a U.S. pill factory in Colorado that resulted in 450 job losses, as well as redundancies in Japan.
The company did not announce the cost of the latest cuts but, said it would take charges over the four-year period.
The net effect of the restructuring is about 2,100 jobs lost, Novartis said, taking into account new positions it is creating at soon-to-be-built Swiss facilities to make Kymriah.
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