Bristol-Myers Squibb has appointed a new Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer after Dr Elliott Sigal announced his retirement from both positions at the end of June.

The experienced Dr Francis Cuss has been selected to fill both roles after serving in a number of senior appointments since he joined the company in 2003.

Lamberto Andreotti, BMS CEO, said Dr Cuss is a “strong and collaborative leader with broad experience” and now is a “natural time” for him to lead the company’s R&D team.

The new R&D leader said he was “honoured” to lead the “talented R&D team to fulfil our mission and find new ways to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines for patients with unmet medical needs.”

He first joined the company a decade ago as Senior Vice President for Drug Discovery. He later went on to take responsibility for Discovery Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology and was appointed a member of the company’s senior management team three years ago.

The retiring Dr Sigal first joined BMS in 1997 as Vice President of the newly created department of Applied Genomics. He has been a member of the senior management team since 2001 and became Executive Vice President five years later. He was also elected to the board of directors in 2011.

“Elliott has been a key leader in the development and execution of our company’s strategy to become a BioPharma leader,” said Lamberto Andreotti. “He and his team have become one of the most productive and innovative R&D organisations in the industry. I am grateful for the many things that Elliott and I have been able to accomplish together.”

Novartis has warned the Government to reduce R&D bureaucracy to increase innovation or it will move its UK operations overseas.

Jon Symonds, Global Finance Director of Novartis, said that Britain is losing its competitive edge to emerging markets and called for the Government to streamline its R&D approach.

“One of the characteristics of the UK is a very low up-take on innovation. Sitting in another part of the business allocating my resources, if we don’t see the up-take in the UK resources will be allocated elsewhere,” said Mr Symonds.

To address the issue the pharmaceutical giant has arranged a meeting of scientists, NHS trustees and Government officials in London.

Novartis allocates around $10bn globally to research and development a year. Speaking in The Telegraph Mr Symonds said it usually costs a pharma company around $1bn to bring a new drug to market. However, he added there’s only a small window of opportunity to recoup this investment before products are exposed to generic competition.

Mr Symonds is expected to tell attendees at the crisis meeting that “the placement of research is increasingly globally competitive: we can and must make choices over where we invest.”

He will highlight how the Swiss-based company has chosen to invest in Shanghai, Russia and Brazil because the “one thing these markets have in common is that they have each recognised the need to shift from being a consumer of innovation to a generator of innovation.”

A withdrawal by Novartis would be another blow to the UK pharma industry. Pfizer cut 2,400 jobs last year when it closed R&D activities at its facility in Sandwich, Kent. Novartis UK currently employs around 3,500 people across eight sites.

Ana Nicholls, Healthcare Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said that Novartis is right to warn the Government over its prolong R&D processes – especially at a time when emerging markets are making “determined efforts to boost innovations in their pharma industries.”

She added that the Government has tried to make the “UK more attractive for pharma R&D” through schemes such as the Patent Box and with its proposed changes to the Patents Act. But she warned “Novartis wants the Government to go further and streamline the whole trial and approval process – a push that will no doubt be supported by GSK, AstraZeneca and others.”

An increase in pharmaceutical jobs in Europe helped the total number of life sciences roles increase by 3.7% in the first three months of 2012, according to a report.

ZRG Partners’ Life Science Hiring Index found pharmaceutical jobs increased by 25% in the first quarter in the EMEA region, despite a reduction in sales and marketing and R&D positions.

Job growth in the global medical device industry also increased by 6.8% as roles in the Asia Pacific region jumped by 102% – mainly due to recruitment by Philips and Siemens.

But the report found that outsourcing and CRO positions fell by 5.7% after roles in North America were substantially cut and jobs remained flat in Asia Pacific.

Hiring activity in the Americas decreased by a tenth, however it still recorded its highest level in the past two years, research found.

The EMEA region reversed a trend in the past six months as overall positions increased by 18% with a rise in pharmaceutical and outsourcing roles; medical device positions remained flat.

Regulatory, clinical and quality positions made up more than a third (36%) of jobs in EMEA, followed by IT, finance and general administrative positions (31%). Research and development roles made up nearly a fifth (18%) of overall positions with sales and marketing jobs making up 11% and manufacturing accounting for just 4% of all roles.

Emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region again helped boost the global outlook as the amount of jobs also increased by 18%, despite outsourcing/CRO remaining flat and pharmaceutical jobs falling.

Despite the US already cutting 4,800 jobs this year, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas, the Index found that the Americas still account for 51% of global life science roles, followed by EMEA (28%) and Asia Pacific (21%).

Nearly half of professionals working within the pharmaceutical industry fear being made redundant in the next 12 months, a new report has found.

Pharma IQ’s The Big Pharma Recession Survey 2011 revealed that 44.4% of respondents feared the axe with those working within the US and European markets believing they are most at risk.

The report, conducted at the end of last year, assessed how the global economy is directly impacting professionals working within the industry and discovered their expectations in 2012.

Unsurprisingly it found that the US and Europe are the two regions which respondents feel have been affected the most by the global economic crisis. The report found that the Emerging Markets in the east appear to be the least affected region with 7.3% of participants identifying this region as being the worst hit.

More than two-thirds of respondents (71.2%) agreed that the global pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a dramatic change due to the recession which has swept the globe. Research and development divisions have been impacted the most, 37.9% of respondents said, followed by sales and marketing (30.7%), manufacturing (11.2%), clinical (10.8%), regulatory affairs (3.6%), IT (3.2%) and distribution (2.6%).

After witnessing widespread job losses within the industry in recent years, almost half of respondents (47.5%) said that the industry is ill-prepared to deal with a double-dip recession.

But participants did expect to see an increase in outsourcing and offshoring as pharma searches for new models to combat price reductions and global austerity measures.

“All companies must remain profitable to survive and the pharmaceutical industry is no different,” said Andrea Charles, Editor, Pharma IQ. “As economic landscapes change, pharmaceutical companies must find new models for growth and profitability in 2012 and beyond.”

The ABPI has played down any worries over the state of the UK pharmaceutical industry after AstraZeneca’s restructuring plans put jobs at risk at two plants in Cheshire.

Approximately 7,300 jobs will be axed by AZ in the next three years with the GMB Union predicting that 250-300 jobs will go from the company’s R&D site at Alderley Park, Cheshire.

However, the ABPI says the UK remains a “global leader in science and healthcare and huge levels of R&D investment continue to take place”, and insisted the job cuts were not a reflection of the UK market.

In a statement, the Association says that AZ has a “long history” of investment as a big employer and contributor to the economy and it expects this to continue.

It realises that the “industry has modernised in recent years” to a more integrated partnership model with companies of all sizes working together – along with an increase in joint working between pharma and the NHS.

The Government has supported the UK industry, the statement said, and continues to “encourage investment and growth in the life sciences sector”. But the ABPI has called on the Government to continue this approach and focus on promises previously made.

The Association says it needs to continue to “do all it can” to incentivise investment. Recent initiatives such as the patent box have been positive, the statement said, but the Government “must follow through on the promises made in the Autumn Package”.

“The Government will need to reward innovation by designing a pricing scheme that values innovation and encourages R&D to take place in the UK,” said the statement.

Merck (MSD outside the US) topped the job-cutting charts in 2011 as the industry witnessed another year of workforce reductions after a series of cost-cutting measures from a number of pharma giants.

Merck revealed plans in July to reduce its workforce by 12,000 to 13,000 following its merger in 2009 and to realign expenses with the expected reduction in revenue when Singulair loses its exclusivity in August, in an attempt to save $1.5billion.

Pfizer followed Merck after it after cut thousands of jobs after planning to close R&D plants in Sandwich, Kent, at a cost of around 2,400 jobs and in Connecticut accounting for a further 1,100 positions. An additional 500 employees in Germany and 220 in Spain have also reportedly been axed.

The world’s largest research-based pharma company aims to cut its R&D budget by $1.5 billion after realigning its investigational priorities and following the loss of exclusivity on its blockbuster drug Lipitor.

Novartis came third when wielding the axe after it revealed plans to reduce its workforce by 2,000 in an attempt to save $200 million a year. Workers were relieved of their duties at sites across Europe and reportedly in New Jersey. However, the company did invest somewhere in the region of $600 on a new R&D facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Abbott Laboratories followed in fourth position after it revealed at the start of last year that it would tackle the challenging regulatory environment by cutting 1,900 employees, or 6% of its staff. Further upheaval is also expected in 2012 when the company completes its breakup of the company into one focused pharmaceutical business and one solely for medical products.

AstraZeneca completed the top-five after it shed more than 1,500 positions in the US and Europe last year as it braced itself for the expiration of patents on brands on Seroquel by reducing its American sales team by nearly a quarter. The London-based company did however increase its presence in the emerging Chinese market.

Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, Eisai and Bayer Healthcare completed the top-ten companies for job losses as the industry struggled to compensate for major brand patent expiries, a challenging healthcare environment and a need to align expenses with growth targets.

Merck is to invest $1.5 billion in China over the next five years and create approximately 600 new positions at a purpose built R&D headquarters in Beijing.

The 47,000 square metre facility for innovative drug discovery and development will be located in Wangjing Park with first phase construction scheduled for completion by 2014.

Peter S Kim, President, Merck Research Laboratories, says the Asia headquarters “represents an important milestone” and Merck will now be able to “facilitate new collaborations with scientists in the region and across emerging markets.”

The new office and laboratory space will work in the areas of drug discovery, translational research, clinical development, regulatory affairs and external scientific research programs. Merck will maintain its commercial headquarters in Shanghai and its other manufacturing capabilities in other locations throughout the country.

Michel Vounatsos, Chairman and President, MSD in China says the company has a “proud legacy” of turning drug discoveries into medicines and vaccines to improve the health of people around the world.

“We are immensely proud of the impact that MSD’s medicines and vaccines have had on improving health for the people of China as we have grown our business here, and are we eager to build on this legacy by directly investing in R&D here in China to bring forward more innovations that can help people in China and around the world.”

Merck is known as MSD outside the US and Canada.

Sanofi plans to cut hundreds of jobs in its sales and R&D departments in the US over the coming months.

The job losses come as the company prepares to lose patent exclusivity on key products and fully absorbs Genzyme following its acquisition in February 2011.

The sales jobs cuts would be focused on Sanofi’s cardiovascular and oncology groups, aiming for cost savings of $2.9 billion per year, said CEO Christopher Viehbacher.

More than 9,000 jobs have been cut at the company over the last several years, including approximately 3,800 sales employees in the US.

The staff reductions in mature markets have been similar at many other pharmaceutical companies, adding vacancies in emerging markets.

According to Mr Viehbacher, Sanofi has added more than 3,700 pharmaceutical jobs in emerging markets since 2008.