Sanofi-Aventis announced plans to cut 10% or less of its 6,500 US sales reps. Specific numbers are not yet available, as the company attempts to shuffle some of the redundant positions to other areas of the company, according to Marc Greene, a Sanofi spokesman. 

The announcement follows the commencement of Chris Viehbacher’s tenure as Sanofi’s CEO, which began on Dec. 1. Viehbacher, a PhRMA board member and previously GlaxoSmithKline’s North America executive director and president, succeeds Gerard Le Fur.

Sanofi-Aventis’s announcement coheres with many other consolidations and layoffs across the industry this year. Company-wide cost-cutting measures, like Wyeth’s “Project Impact” and Novartis’s “Customer Centric Initiative,” as well as other reductions of staff elsewhere, have become a common occurrence of late. A more comprehensive listing can be found here.