October 23, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Irish drugmaker Actavis Plc is once again winnowing the workforce of newly acquired Forest Laboratories, Inc, saying today it will be shuttering Forest’s Earth City site in St. Louis, Missouri, with the probable loss of 190 jobs, and laying off 94 employees at a Long Island pharmaceutical packaging site.
On June 30, 2014, Dublin-based Actavis plc announced its acquisition of New York-based . As is common with large M&A activity, the companies have overlapping services that need to be trimmed.
The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) indicating the employees targeted at the Long Island plant which was formerly part of Forest have been given 90 days notice. Actavis wrote in the WARN that it is relocating a majority of its operations to New Jersey, where it already has manufacturing, R&D and administrative facilities. Two other Forest locations, both in New York, are expected to be affected. One is a lab testing facility in Farmingdale, and the other is a warehouse and clinical packaging center in Hauppage.
Although the three facilities have not been officially tagged for closure, Forest’s headquarters in New York will be shut down in mid-2015. Eighteen jobs will be affected at that location.
The Actavis-Forest deal was valued at $28 billion. The combined companies are expected to have annual revenues of more than $15 billion in 2015. Actavis markets more than 35 products across seven medical market segments. It has five blockbuster franchises and operates in approximately 60 countries. The sectors, with sales each above $1 billion, are in the areas of the central nervous system, gastroenterology, urology, cardiovascular and women’s health.
“With this strategic combination,” said Actavis chairman and CEO Paul Bisaro in a statement, “we create an innovative new model in specialty pharmaceuticals leadership, with size and scale, a balanced offering of strong brands and generics, a focus on strategic, lower-risk drug development.”
In October 2013 Actavis acquired Warner Chilcott plc, which strengthened the company’s global position in women’s health and urology, as well as gastroenterology and dermatology. That acquisition more than doubled the size of Actavis’ Specialty Brands portfolio.
Forest Laboratories was well known for licensing European drugs for sale in the U.S. and having particular focus on R&D. Some of its marketed products included Armour Thyroid, Celexa, Lexapro, Levothroid, Teflaro and Turdorza Pressair.
