Aventis sales and marketing staff in Bridgewater, N.J. are among those whose jobs are on the line as Sanofi-Aventis looks to cut as many as 700 posts at its U.S. headquarters.
The company is moving some global sales and marketing positions for Aventis brands to its global headquarters in Paris, said vice president, U.S. communications Chip Rouse. Sanofi global positions were already based in Paris.
“The jobs that are potentially affected are those either in research in Bridgewater or headquarters-based sales and marketing and support functions, like finance, human resources and legal,” Rouse said. The company’s U.S. sales force of more than 8,000 will be spared the axe, and employees elsewhere in the U.S. are not affected.
Around 3,000 are employed at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Bridgewater, evenly divided between research and commercial operations.
News of the job cuts initially appeared in Friday’s Star-Ledger, which reported that the company had notified the state of plans to cut 689 jobs. Rouse said that number could prove high. “The article made it sound like we were cleaning house in Bridgewater,” said Rouse. “There’s potential for that many people to be displaced as a result of relocation, but many people will have the opportunity to be placed elsewhere in the company.”
The merger of Sanofi and Aventis won shareholder approval Thursday, December 23 in Paris.