For some former employees of Indevus Pharmaceuticals, it’s not such great news that the Lexington, MA, drug developer was acquired by Endo Pharmaceuticals. Chadds Ford, PA-based Endo (NASDAQ:[[ticker:ENDP]]), which completed its $370 million buyout of Indevus in March, is in the process of laying off a quarter of Indevus employees and moving research programs out of the Indevus facility in Lexington, Endo confirms.
Endo will lay off roughly 60 of the 240 workers who were employed by Indevus when the acquisition closed this spring, according to an e-mail from Endo spokesman Kevin Wiggins. The cuts are mostly targeting employees in finance, corporate affairs, and other areas that overlap with the responsibilities of Endo’s staff in place before the buyout. However, Endo has kept all the sales and manufacturing employees from Indevus as well as some of the commercial and research positions, Wiggins indicated. He did not specify how many of the layoffs will affect employees based in Massachusetts or how many workers have already been let go.
Endo is also in the process of moving all the research and development programs from Indevus’s operation in Lexington to labs at Endo’s headquarters in Pennsylvania, according to Wiggins. He declined to be specific about whether the Lexington facility would be shuttered completely, but such a closure would seem likely given the exiting of research projects and workers from the operation.
The layoffs are not a huge surprise. Endo told investors back in January that it planned squeeze out cost savings of $40 million after the acquisition, though it was not specific about how it would trim expenses. Endo, which specializes in providing pain relievers, also wanted to expand its product portfolio to include treatments for the endocrinology and urology markets.
Though its purchase of Indevus, Endo has acquired testosterone undecanoate (Nebido), an experimental testosterone-replacement therapy. Indevus also brought to Endo an approved and marketed drug, histrelin (Supprelin LA), for premature puberty. Its other product, octreotide implant, a treatment for excessive production of growth hormone, is in late-stage clinical development.
As part of the buyout deal, Endo agreed to pay Indevus shareholders up to $267 million or $3 per share if the products Endo acquired from the firm achieve certain development and sales milestones.
The Boston Tech Layoff Tracker has been updated to include the layoffs of former Indevus employees.
