Pfizer takes over Wyeth in €68bn deal

PFIZER, best known for producing Viagra, has become the country’s biggest multinational. It follows completion of its $68 billion (€45.5bn) takeover of Wyeth which, also has a substantial presence across Ireland.

The group now boasts a workforce of more than 5,000 people in Ireland.

Pfizer employs 2,100 people in Cork and Dublin while Wyeth, which specialises in animal as well as human health products, employs more than 3,000 in Dublin, Sligo Limerick and Kildare.

The enlarged group has 13 locations here, but the move, agreed nine months previously, has serious implications for jobs internationally, the group said.

Up to 20,000 jobs will be axed as a result of the takeover, but no decision has been taken on how many jobs, if any, will face the chop in Ireland. The new group has total annual sales of $70bn.

Total capital investment by Pfizer in Ireland since it set up here stands at $7bn.

Paul Duffy, head of the group’s Irish operations, said the “the Pfizer-Wyeth business combines meaningful advances in all of our key strategic goals in a single transaction”.

In effect it created a firm poised to become a leading biopharmaceutical company in a new era, he said.

The enlarged business is a more diversified healthcare company with a substantial product range that cover both animal and consumer health, he said.

Its products include vaccines, biologics, small molecules and nutrition across developed and emerging markets. “The combined company has a robust and growing pipe-line of biopharmaceutical development projects in critical areas,” he said.

The group’s pipeline of products in areas such as Alzheimer’s disease, neuroscience, diabetes and inflammation, allows the group to “respond more effectively to the unmet medical needs of patients around the world”, he said.

Pfizer will decide what research sites to shut in the next 30 to 60 days, according to its chief financial officer.