Irish jobs to go as Amgen cuts 350 employees worldwide after Horizon takeover

Amgen will lay off 350 employees from Irish-headquartered Horizon Therapeutics next year after closing its $27.8 billion (€26.3 billion) acquisition of the rare-disease drugmaker earlier this month. However, just a fraction of that number will affect the Irish operations of the business, at least for now.

More than 80 per cent of Horizon employees have been placed in roles at Amgen, according to an email from Jessica Akopyan, a spokeswoman for the biotechnology company.

The company said that, following the merger, it now employs around 1,250 staff in Ireland. In a statement, Amgen said: “In Ireland, less than 2 per cent of the combined Amgen/legacy Horizon workforce will receive notification that their role has been identified for consultation. We are not providing numbers for individual locations.”

The company clarified that it expected around 22 job losses in Ireland in the current round of cutbacks. None of the laid-off employees have separation dates this year and all cuts would be in the US or Ireland, she said.

Amgen has about 26,700 staff worldwide following the Horizon acquisition, Ms Akopyan said. The company made “changes where we had redundancies in roles or needed to pivot priorities”, she said.

Announced in December, the Horizon purchase is Amgen’s largest and was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission in May. Amgen was permitted to move forward with the deal after agreeing not to bundle its drugs with two of Horizon’s: Tepezza for thyroid eye disease and Krystexxa for gout.

US-based Amgen won out in a three-way tussle with Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson for Horizon Therapeutics last December in what was the biggest pharmaceutical deal of the year.

Amgen said the potential new medicines in Horizon’s pipeline “strongly complement” its existing research and development portfolio.

The company said it manufactures about half of its product line in its Dublin facility on Pottery Road in Dún Laoghaire, where it has invested close to $1 billion over the past 12 years.

The company’s move on Horizon came shortly after the Dublin-headquartered group had established its first in-house manufacturing facility with the takeover of Eirgen’s Waterford plant in a $65 million deal.

The firm, which employs close to 200 people here, opened a new corporate headquarters on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green earlier in 2022. It announced a six-year sponsorship of the Irish Open, rumoured to be worth in the region of €50 million, running up to Ireland’s next hosting of the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in 2027.

Amgen said the Horizon plant in Waterford would become part of a “network-wide evaluations that we continually carry out to consider our supply options to ensure reliable and efficient supply for patients. It will take some time to assess this in conjunction with our entire network capabilities and capacity.” – Bloomberg