Pfizer, which last November announced that it would cut 2,200 jobs, on Monday made it a round 10,000.
The maker of Lipitor, Viagra, and Zoloft will eliminate those 10,000 jobs, equal to about 10 percent of its worldwide workforce, by the end of 2008.
The company will also continue to consolidate manufacturing plants, shuttering facilities in Brooklyn and in Omaha, Nebraska, and pursuing a sale of its plant in Feucht, Germany. Pfizer also plans to close three Michigan-based research sites, two in Ann Arbor and one in Kalamazoo, and may do the same with facilities in Nagoya, Japan, and Amboise, France.
The savings, estimated to total between $1.5 billion and $2 billion by the end of 2008, will be shifted to “more value-added activities,” according to the company. The areas expected to receive more funding include research and development, business development, emerging markets, and new marketing approaches.
The pharmaceutical giant will supplement the cutbacks with other companywide efforts, such as establishing smaller, more nimble operating units to drive innovation while still drawing on the scale and resources of a company that reported $48 billion in revenue for 2006.
“We are facing significant challenges, however, in a profoundly changing business environment,” said chairman and chief executive officer Jeffrey B. Kindler, in a statement.” I believe we must fundamentally change the way we run our company to meet these challenges and to take advantage of the diverse and attractive opportunities that we see in the marketplace.”