Dive Brief:
- Amgen CEO Robert Bradway nabbed a $14 million pay package last year, FiercePharma reports. However, 2,900 employees are facing lay-offs.
- In 2014, Amgen had more than $20 billion in revenues and roughly $6.7 billion in net income.
- Last year, Amgen announced that manufacturing and R&D sites in Colorado would be closed down, as would similar sites in Washington state. Meanwhile, the headcount is also decreasing at Amgen's Thousand Oaks, CA headquarters.
Dive Insight:
Even though things are going well for Bradway, other Amgen executives have seen their compensation decrease, including commercial chief Anthony Hooper, whose pay decreased from $8.6 million in 2012 to $5.6 million in 2014.
Sean Harper, head of R&D, saw his pay decrease from $6.09 million in 2012, to $5.34 million in 2014. These pay cuts all fall under the rubric of cost-cutting measures, which have extended to the broader workforce.
In large part, such measures are driven by concerns about biosimilar competition. Since the FDA approval of Zarxio (a biosimilar versio of Amgen's Neupogen) last month, the threat of biosimilar competition in the U.S. is becoming a reality.