Pfizer announced plans on 22 January 2007 to eliminate 10,000 positions, roughly 10 percent of its worldwide workforce, as the US drugmaker moves to reduce costs and reorganize operations under recently appointed chief executive Jeffrey Kindler.
The company will shut two American manufacturing facilities and two US research sites, while also closing locations in Japan and France and selling a German plant. European staffing is set to fall by more than 20 percent, subject to union talks.
Pfizer has faced mounting pressure from generic competitors to flagship products including Zithromax and Zoloft, and the development pipeline has offered little to reassure investors. Sales of its top-selling cholesterol drug Lipitor have declined, and the company recently abandoned its experimental compound torcetrapib after an elevated rate of patient deaths in clinical trials.
Fourth-quarter profit surged to 9.4 billion dollars, but the jump largely reflected the sale of its consumer healthcare division to Johnson and Johnson. Revenue grew a modest 0.8 percent to 12.6 billion dollars in the period, and Pfizer projected that 2007 and 2008 revenues would be only comparable to 2006 levels.
Kindler said the restructuring aims to redirect hundreds of millions of dollars toward research and development by shrinking administrative overhead and consolidating facilities.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in January 2007, in its own words.