In the wake of all of the lawsuits against drug giant GlaxoSmithKline as well as poor sales, the company has decided to cut some jobs from its Neurosciences Division. According to a Charlotte Observer report, the jobs will be cut in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.
A Glaxo spokeswoman, Kathy Pitman, said that the number of employees that will be cut from the company really depends on how many of them can work in other positions at the firm. So far, Glaxo has already cut 22,000 jobs all over the globe since 2007. In the U.S. alone, Glaxo has cut as many as 4,100 jobs, which brought the total from 9,500 down to 5,400. The jobs had been cut due to a drop in sales of popular drugs like Paxil and Avandia and from the company suffering financial losses in at least 2 out of the last 3 quarters. Some of those losses can be likely be attributed to settlements being made left and right over the company’s harmful drugs.
The bad sales were not helped by the company losing over $2 billion dollars in lawsuits against Avandia, its popular diabetes medication, and Paxil. The various investigations and huge settlement Glaxo had to pay after the whistleblower lawsuit alone have taken their toll on the company’s finances as well. Glaxo has gotten a lot of bad press over Paxil’s side effects and the lawsuits haven’t slowed down much, either.
As to how the company plans to correct some of its financial woes, company officials say that they are planning on selling some of their less popular brands and buying some of its stock back from investors. As for the changes in the neurosciences research department, Pitman had this to say with regards to why they are letting so many people go: “Last year we scaled back our neurosciences research so there’s not as much people needed to do the late-stage trials.”
