‘It’s Happened Before:’ Biz Leaders React to Biogen Idec’s San Diego Shutdown

[Corrected 11/04/10, 9:25 am to reflect merger] When Cambridge, MA-based Biogen consummated its merger with San Diego’s Idec Pharmaceuticals in November 2003, Executive Chairman William H. Rastetter said, “Based on our existing collaboration in oncology, we knew that this combination would be an excellent fit, both operationally and culturally,” according to a statement issued at the time.

Now, just seven years after closing the $6.8 billion deal, Biogen Idec said yesterday it plans to shut down its San Diego research and corporate campus, which focused on cancer drug development, and lay off most of its San Diego employees. Rastetter, who was Idec Pharmaceutical’s founding CEO (and who joined Venrock’s Palo Alto, CA, office in 2006), declined to comment yesterday.

Other local business leaders said the shutdown is both a sign of the times, and a pattern that has become all-too-familiar among the venture-backed companies that often shut down or depart San Diego’s “grow to sell” market.

“I can fully understand why they decided to do it,” said Julie Meier Wright, CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. “It reminds me of some other corporate decisions we’ve seen here, like Gateway, General Dynamics, and even Hughes Aerospace, years ago.” Biogen Idec, she added, is “a first-rate company, and ideally their people will be absorbed here in San Diego.”

Biocom CEO Joe Panetta sounded a similar theme when I caught up with him yesterday during an all-day conference the local life sciences industry group had organized to focus on human resources training.

“From a historical standpoint, it’s sad to see that one of the original biotech companies in San Diego is now closing its doors here,” Panetta said. But he also noted that a recurring theme of the HR conference was the challenge to find experienced and highly talented employees in the life sciences. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s the story of the biotech industry in San Diego,” Panetta said. It’s happened before, and I can point you to any number of people who were laid off and went on to start great biotech companies.”

Panetta added, “This closure to me is not indicative of

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.