Roche Ireland, the Co Clare based pharmaceutical company, has repeated that Irish jobs are safe and has said it had no role to play in an unscheduled meeting of the parent group's supervisory board yesterday.
Roche Holding AG, the parent group, denied that advancing the meeting from September reflected any kind of crisis at the Swiss drugs and diagnostics group.
Mr T.J. Waters, the HR manager for Roche Ireland, said he had no comment other than the company was not party to discussions taking place at board level. But he reiterated that no job losses at the Clarecastle plant were anticipated against the background of a full order book. A review of the pharmaceutical division is being carried out by the parent group, but Mr Waters said that, prior to its completion, it would be premature to comment on the outcome.
Roche Ireland employs 250 people in the bulk manufacture of six pharmaceutical compounds which are then converted to dosage form at other plants. A spokesman for Roche Holding said the board meeting had been planned many weeks ago. He declined to give any details about the agenda. The Financial Times reported yesterday that Roche was holding the unscheduled board meeting which was originally planned for September.
The board was expected to address planned job cuts at Roche's flagship pharmaceuticals division, which is trying to slash costs and boost margins amid flat sales, the impact of patent expiries and setbacks in its development pipeline.
The Financial Times quoted chairman Franz Humer as saying he expected the pharmaceutical division's margins to increase to between 20 and 25 per cent in two to three years from around 16 to 18 per cent now.
Roche has already said it is conducting a major review of the division on both sides of the Atlantic to cut costs and fuel lasting growth. It will announce its plans by the end of May or early June.
Asked if US operations based in Nutley, New Jersey, would take the brunt of job cuts, a spokesman said: "Most probably yes. It is there where you have a lot of big sites, but it is not only Nutley."
The drugs division accounts for nearly two-thirds of the group's global workforce of 65,000. Yesterday's board meeting was the first since news emerged last week that archrival Novartis AG had acquired a 20 per cent voting stake in Roche from disgruntled Roche shareholder Martin Ebner's BZ Gruppe Holding. Novartis called the stake both financial and strategic, and said it opened several options for co-operation that would be explored more. Roche officials have played down the importance of Novartis's arrival, stressing that the Hoffmann and Oeri families have no intentions of ceding their majority voting stake in the group at this stage.
Mr Humer said in an interview with a Swiss paper on Sunday that a full-blown merger with Novartis was absolutely not a topic. Roche's dual share structure allows Roche's founding families to control votes in the company with a small equity stake held in illiquid bearer shares. The rest of its equity is in more widely traded non-voting certificates.
