Merck plans to slash up to 13,000 more jobs by 2015, the latest large pharmaceutical corporation seeking to offset slowing sales by cutting costs.

Merck expects to continue hiring in growth areas of its business, including emerging markets. The company also will stick with expansion plans at its massive Durham operations, which packages and eventually will grow vaccines to protect against chicken pox and other diseases.

Officials expect to hire more than 150 people at that campus this year, adding to the 450 jobs created during the past few years.

Merck also continues to expand a packaging facility in Wilson that employs about 350 people.

Company spokesman David Caouette told the Associated Press that 35 percent to 40 percent of the new job cuts will be in the U.S., but that he couldn't provide specifics.

The cost-cutting news follows a similar strategy at other big drug makers, including Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. Faced with increasing generic competition and lower reimbursements from government health programs, the companies are reducing expenses, pushing harder to find promising new drugs and fine-tuning their business to appease investors.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck, which recently completed its $430 million acquisition of Inspire Pharmaceuticals, is closing the company's Raleigh headquarters as of Aug. 31 and eliminating 51 jobs.

Merck notified N.C. officials yesterday of its plans to shut down the headquarters. "The entire facility is to be closed," Merck said in the letter to the N.C. Department of Commerce.

The move will mean the elimination of 51 jobs left at the Inspire office, Merck reported. Last month Merck said it planned to close Inspire's local headquarters before the end of the year. At that time, the company had an estimated 60 workers in Raleigh.

Inspire was founded in 1995 on research conducted at UNC-Chapel Hill and went public in 2000. It had 240 employees at the outset of this  year, but cut 27 percent of its workforce in February after its experimental treatment for cystic fibrosis unexpectedly failed in clinical trials. That failure, after 10 years and $120 million spent on the drug's development, triggered the company's sale.

Inspire Pharmaceuticals reported a bigger net loss during the first quarter, mostly because of expenses related to a restructuring and layoffs.

The Raleigh-based company agreed last month to be bought by Merck for about $430 million. Inspire sells drugs to treat eye ailments, but stumbled when an experimental treatment for cystic fibrosis failed in a clinical trial.

After that misstep, Inspire announced in February that it would cut 65 jobs, or about a quarter of its workforce.

For the first three months of this year, Inspire had a net loss of $17.6 million, compared with a loss of $14.8 million a year earlier.

Inspire Pharmaceuticals, a Raleigh drug-development company, announced this morning that it agreed to be bought by Merck for about $430 million.

Merck will pay $5 per share for Inspire, which earlier this year scrapped efforts to develop an experimental drug to treat cystic fibrosis.

Inspire's stock, which is down 36 percent in the past year, closed Monday at $3.98.

In February, Inspire announced it would cut about a quarter of its workforce, or 65 jobs, as it restructured to focus on products to treat various eye ailments.

The deal with Merck will end Inspire's run as one of the Triangle's successful independent drug companies.

Inspire's largest investor, Warburg Pincus, has agreed to the terms of the deal.

Merck will sell its Diosynth biotechnology manufacturing plant in Morrisville to Fujifilm Holdings of Japan, the companies announced Sunday night.

Diosynth is known as a contract manufacturing organization, and its local facility, which has changed corporate owners several times in recent years, makes products for pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Fujifilm  is expected to keep Diosynth's 370 local employees in the deal, said Merck spokeswoman Cheznee Johnson.

Merck is moving ahead with ambitious hiring plans at a massive vaccine factory in Durham, with a goal of adding another 150 employees this year.

The new jobs will come on top of the 230 people Merck hired last year, increasing the current total to 450. The facility is preparing to package and eventually grow vaccines to protect against chicken pox and other diseases.

The company announced plans in 2004 for the campus on 262 acres in northern Durham's Treyburn Corporate Park, further reinforcing the Triangle as a hub for vaccine production. In December, Novartis announced plans to expand its massive Holly Springs vaccine plant, and add 100 more jobs during the next two years.

At Merck this year, one focus is to catch up with expansions and rapid hiring, plant manager John Wagner said in a phone interview.

Several large pharma companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, are being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the Financial Times of London.

Justice is looking at payments made by the companies for hospitality, consultants and licensing around the world to see if the companies used the money to influence the reliability of the data in clinical trials performed outside the United States.

Such payments would violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. anti-bribery law, according to the paper.

The Times quoted sources familiar with the investigation saying that Justice was looking at all aspects of the companies dealings in non-U.S. markets, including recruiting physicians for clinical trials.

London-based GSK, which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park,  told the Times that it had received inquiries from U.S. authorities.

Merck, which has a vaccine plant in Durham, as well as Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly have also disclosed being contacted by Justice and the SEC.
 

As Merck officials await regulatory approval to begin commercial production at a new vaccine plant in Durham, the company is cutting back other places.

Merck announced this morning that it plans to close eight research labs and eight manufacturing plants worldwide, as part of a broader cost-cutting effort following its acquisition of rival Schering-Plough last year.

The restructuring also is tied to a plan to eliminate about 15,000 jobs, or 15 percent of Merck's workforce.

Meanwhile, Merck expects to receive word this month from the Food and Drug Administration to begin selling vaccines made at its Durham facility. Two more phases of expansion at the plant are expected to be ready in 2012.

Merck & Co. continues to expand its vaccine manufacturing operations in Durham.

In August, the company plans to begin building a 40,000 square-foot testing lab at its massive campus under construction in Treyburn Corporate Park. The lab is expected to open in 2012 and employ 50 to 60 people, said plant manager John Wagner.

That's in addition to the 275 people now employed at the main vaccine operations, a total that will reach about 400 by the end of the year.

Merck is awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin selling vaccines made at its Durham facility and expects to receive word in July. Two more phases of expansion at the plant are expected to be ready in 2012.

HCL Technologies, an Indian consulting firm with offices in Cary, has signed a five-year, $500 million deal with pharmaceutical giant Merck that will create at least 100 new jobs in the Triangle.

HCL is expanding its existing relationship with Merck. Since 2004, the company has provided Merck with IT services, remote infrastructure management, and other engineering and business services.

"Obviously, we are very pleased that the work that we've done for them for the last few years has been satisfactory," said Shami Khorana, president of HCL Americas. "They've had the confidence in us to not only renew the contract but enlarge the relationship considerably."

HCL America, a subsidiary of HCL Technologies, announced in 2008 that it would create 513 jobs in Wake County over the next five years.

The state promised the company a grant worth as much as $5.07 million to win the expansion.

HCL employs about 90 people, mostly software engineers, at its offices in the Regency Lakeview building in Cary. Khorana said the company expects to add 50 to 60 new employees over the next three months.

He said the company still expects to meet its goal of hiring 513 people within five years.