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AstraZeneca axes 7,300 jobs, warns of profit fall

Reuters Health News, 2012

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A worker leaves the AstraZeneca research facility in Loughborough, March 2, 2010.
LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca is cutting a further 7,300 jobs and expects earnings to fall 14-18 percent this year as patents on key drugs expire and governments in Europe and the United States squeeze prices.
Britain's second-biggest drugmaker said on Thursday the latest phase of cuts, equivalent to 12 percent of the workforce, would deliver an extra $1.6 billion in annual benefits by the end of 2014.
The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker faces loss of exclusivity on many of its top-selling drugs over the next five years and has few obvious replacements in its pipeline.
The antipsychotic medicine Seroquel, its second-biggest drug, will lose exclusivity in the United States in March and also goes off patent in European countries this year.
The company has already implemented two earlier rounds of cutbacks involving 21,600 job losses since 2007, which has reduced its worldwide headcount to 61,000.
The lack of obvious replacements for products like Seroquel and heartburn treatment Nexium, as well as top-selling heart drug Crestor which goes off patent in 2016, has triggered speculation AstraZeneca may need to make a big acquisition.
Following the poorly received purchase of MedImmune in 2007, the company has so far eschewed another large deal.
But that strategy could be up for review, especially with the group casting around for an outsider to replace current chairman Louis Schweitzer.
Doubts about AstraZeneca's future have grown since a double blow to its new drug pipeline in December when it scrapped an ovarian cancer drug and took a big writedown on an experimental antidepressant.