Pfizer Inc's chief executive acknowledged today that a potential merger with AstraZeneca would lead to job losses, but promised to keep key research jobs in Britain as part of its USD 106 billion takeover bid.
CEO Ian Read refused to give specifics on where the cuts might take place as he testified before Parliament's Business Innovation and Skills Committee but described them as an inevitable outcome of the merger. Still he told skeptical lawmakers the company would honor its promises to keep 20 per cent of its global research and development workforce in the UK.
"There will be some job cuts somewhere, that's part of being more efficient," he said. "Whereabouts in the world I cannot say."
The US drugmaker has sought in writing to ease worries that British jobs will be lost and research undermined by the transaction - concerns that have made the takeover politically fraught. Critics on the committee, however, repeatedly attacked what they described as Pfizer's ruthless track record, accusing the company of buying foreign firms and then downsizing.
Amid heated questioning, Read was forced to place his personal honor - and that of Pfizer - on the table.
"We are a highly ethical company," he said. "We keep our promises."
AstraZeneca has rebuffed three approaches since January, saying Pfizer's last offer undervalues the company.
AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot, a biologist by training, stressed that a takeover would disrupt its work on a potentially lucrative pipeline of new drugs. He also called the five-year time window offered by the Pfizer commitments too short.
"From the lab to the patient takes many years," Soriot said, stressing that people who are sick would prefer that the company make drugs rather than fight takeover bids. "It's a question of avoiding distraction."
The deal would be the largest-ever foreign takeover of a British company. It's politically charged because it revives memories of when American food giant Kraft abandoned job pledges after its takeover of Cadbury in 2010.
Unions are particularly angry, in part because Pfizer said the commitments are made with the assumption that circumstances won't change "significantly.
