Generic drug company Actavis has completed restructuring its U.S. Specialty Brands sales organization following its $8.5 billion acquisition of Warner Chilcott. The firm says Actavis Specialty Brands now will have a sales organization consisting of roughly 750 professionals (including sales representatives, district managers, national account managers, and associated management), compared to the combined total of around 1,100 Actavis and Warner Chilcott professionals who were present when the acquisition closed in October—a butcher’s bill of around 350 people.
Actavis says the restructured sales organization will have equal or better coverage than the legacy Warner Chilcott sales organization in all its therapeutic areas. It will also include a number of institutional representatives to support promotion to clinics. The firm will be offering severance benefits and outplacement services to the staff who were laid off and is planning to outline the complete structure of its new Specialty Brands commercial organization in January at its investor day.
“Beginning at close, we initiated an extensive assessment and review process to determine the appropriate structure for our U.S. Specialty Brands sales organization, recognizing that the two companies had significant overlap in key areas,” said Actavis Specialty Brands’ president Fred Wilkinson in a statement. “We anticipate a smooth transition to this new sales organization and to seamlessly supporting our physician base.”
The Warner Chilcott acquisition was said at the time of the initial announcement back in May to be a deal that would expand Actavis into the nation’s third-largest specialty pharmaceutical company. Women’s health, gastroenterology, urology, and dermatology are among Actavis’ core therapeutic areas.