Amid closures and cuts, Genentech starts building

While news has been flying about Pfizer and Merck's cost-cutting and real estate moves since their respective mergers with Wyeth and Schering-Plough, Roche quietly has been shifting jobs and operations, too. The latest: Roche's Genentech unit is going forward on a new building on its South San Francisco campus, at a time when it's moving some jobs to the area from other sites.

Roche bought out the share of Genentech it didn't already own last year. Since then, the Swiss drugmaker has made plenty of changes, including a two-phased management shuffle and the closure of some New Jersey facilities and an R&D site in Palo Alto. Roche also laid off workers as it sought to cut costs and streamline its post-merger operations.

To date, the company has cut $1 billion in costs and moved a host of jobs to South San Francisco, Roche's Erich Hunziker told the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. And now it's ready to go forward with a long-held plan to add a third office building to that campus.

- Read the San Francisco Business Times story [1]

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