Pfizer - Top 10 Layoffs of 2009

Company: Pfizer
Layoffs: 19,500

Scoop: This is the second time Pfizer has topped our annual list. In 2007 the drug developer cut 10,000 jobs following the spectacular failure of its highly-anticipated drug trocetrapib. But 2009's layoffs are the result of the company's $68 billion buyout of Wyeth. As the two companies worked to integrate, redundant jobs inevitably fell by the wayside. The merger is expected to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 19,500 jobs, or about 15 percent of the two companies combined workforce.

Pfizer noted that the company had already been working to eliminate 8,000 jobs before the merger. But the Wall Street Journal calculated that only 6,500 positions had been cut, leaving a further 13,000 to be cut in the merger.