May 7, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
UK-based GlaxoSmithKline has been cutting jobs left and right in the U.S. and around the world, and now has a plan on how to make money off the empty office space the firings create.
In March, GSK announced it would lay off more than 180 people in North Carolina, just the most recent of its approximately 1,000 North Carolina job cuts. In February the company reported it was laying off an additional 150 people in Pennsylvania. In January it announced it was laying off 1,000 people in China.
The layoffs are part of a major restructuring the company has been making. Part of it revolves around GSK’s joint venture with Swiss firm Novartis AG . The two companies created a joint consumer healthcare business. Novartis bought GSK’s oncology products for $14.5 billion with an additional $1.5 billion thrown in for hitting development milestones. GSK paid $7.1 billion and royalties for Novartis’ vaccine business, except its influenza business.
GSK reported an overall drop of 3 percent in total revenue in 2014. The U.S. sales decreased by 10 percent, apparently due to formulary and contract changes to its blockbuster drug, Advair. Despite those problems, the pharmaceutical and vaccine sales in Emerging Markets grew by 5 percent and 1 percent in Japan.
Now, in North Carolina, the state’s State Property Office is looking for 400,000 to 500,000 square feet of office space in the Research Triangle Park area to house state workers while other buildings are being renovated. In April the state sent out a notice for proposals. One of the 10 responses was from GSK.
GSK is proposing 490,000 square feet at its campus at 5 Moore Drive in Research Triangle Park.
“We are in the process of consolidating all our RTP employees into a newly renovated collection of buildings with open work space on our Moore Drive Campus,” said GSK spokeswoman Marti Skold Jordan in a statement. “GSK has excess capacity at this campus, including buildings affected by the restructuring announced in December 2014. This RFP response is clearly part of our desire to find prospective owners or tenants of our buildings to be vacated.”
Of the 10 proposals received by the state, only three are under real consideration because most offered less than 400,000 square feet of space. GSK is one of the three under consideration.
Will Hungry Pfizer Make a Play for Struggling GlaxoSmithKline?
Almost a year after its $119 billion offer for AstraZeneca PLC fell apart in the face of massive opposition from regulators and internal dissent, global drugmaker Pfizer Inc. is once again being floated as a potential buyer of another marquee-name British pharmaceutical company: GlaxoSmithKline . We at BioSpace want to know your thoughts: With cash to burn, will Pfizer go hunting for Glaxo?
