US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer today unveiled 10,000 job cuts as part of a cost-cutting restructuring that will eliminate 10% of its global workforce.
Pfizer chief executive Jeffrey Kindler, who took over the reins in mid-December, said the company was closing two manufacturing plants in the United States and selling one in Germany.
The world's biggest drugmaker in terms of revenues also plans to close two research sites in the US, and other sites in Japan and France.
The job losses will not affect Pfizer Ireland, which
employs 2,000 people in Cork and Dun Laoghaire in Dublin.
'Pfizer is a great company with a great future,' Kindler said in a statement. 'We are facing significant challenges, however, in a profoundly changing business environment.'
The company is suffering as generic drugmakers pump out rivals to best-selling medications, and it has nothing in the development pipeline to excite Wall Street.
Sales of Pfizer's blockbuster anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor have dipped and last month, it made the shock decision to scrap its most promising drug, torcetrapib, after a high number of patient deaths during clinical trials of the cholesterol-lowering treatment.
Earlier today Pfizer reported that fourth quarter profits more than tripled to $9.4 billion, largely as a result of the sale of its consumer healthcare business to Johnson & Johnson.
Excluding once-off costs and charges, Pfizer's quarterly earnings fell to 43 cents per share, compared with 49 cents a year earlier. Fourth-quarter sales rose slightly to $12.6 billion. For the whole of 2006, Pfizer reported net profits of $19.3 billion, up sharply from $8.1 billion in 2005.
'In the face of many challenges in 2006, we substantially achieved a number of financial targets that we set early in the year,' said Mr Kindler.
But Kindler added that Pfizer continued to face a 'difficult operating environment'.
