the idea that innovative ideas and blockbuster new products are going to permeate through the fabric of the building just by being in Cambridge is also wishful thinking.

" The real challnege will be to rebuild the small molecule oncology organisation, which has been relately successful in recent times with Iressa, Faslodex and Vandetinib selling $1.7b in 2012 and growing."

Wishful thinking. Typical AP thinking. Small molecules, particularly in cancer, are toast. They are too dirty, too indiscriminate.

No, you are indulging in mindless optimism. AZ are moving to Cambridge to change the 'game'. To do that they need to be close to where people are thinking creatively and are not wedded to an old and dying paradigm.

Pascal is doing allright.
For him self that is.
He was paid £275,000 and got a hefty £335,000 bonus for his first three months in the job. His annual salary is £1.1m and his annual bonus could be 180% of that.

He also got a £4m “golden hello” to compensate him for the loss of bonuses from his last employer.

So, £4,610,000 for three months work? Not bad, ...or is it?

What has gone wrong with this company? I left just before Zeneca was born ie I worked for
ICI Pharrmaceuticals. It was a great company. We discovered and marketed lots of great drugs. I find it sad that it has come to this.

Zeneca was what was wrong with AstraZeneca. Bureaucracy, Kepner-Tragoe, etc. Completely stifled free-thinking - as long as you'd based your decisions on objective data crunching, then had several meetings to gain buy-in from the yes-men (because this is the way we've ALWAYS done it), you were fine.

Last week we were told that Cambridge would be the heart of the AZ organisation. Despite some scepticism on this board, I do believe that Cambridge will happen. You cannot tell the external world that you plan to create a new hub, and that Oncology is one of the key therapy areas, and not do it. The real challnege will be to rebuild the small molecule oncology organisation, which has been relately successful in recent times with Iressa, Faslodex and Vandetinib selling $1.7b in 2012 and growing.

Personaly I hope it works out - I don't see the value in hoping otherwise.

arrogance and crippling bureaucracy is a pretty good description of Charnwood too. Don't know how many times we were told (by Charnwood management) we were the jewel in the crown of AZ.

I would say that arrogance had spread to larger parts of AP than in most other sites, but among the old guard at Molndal ("we inventerd Losec and should be treated as demi-gods") there was also an attitude that still lingers on. AP, Molndal & Carthage ought all to meet the same destiny...

Having worked at other sites I agree that "arrogance" characterises AP. Stuffed shirts (blouses) and hubris. There was never any willingness to accept other's ideas. I can fully understand why a geographic move is necessary to achieve an innovative research function. Per force this means leaving a large number of the employees behind.

"........may you all get what you want"

Or get what you deserve.......... I worked at AP for a while, best thing I did was get away from the place - absolutely bizarre place to work, thankfully I was there only short while, I got out when I could. The arrogance of the people who work there, coupled with the crippling bureaucracy, had to be experienced to be believed. Chickens coming home to roost me thinks....

Well, we await the consultation period to close to find out if its a quick restructure to the new organisation or a slow death till 2016. Restructuring is going to cause more delays with the development pipeline, personally I will do my job, but why go the extra mile? Those leaving upon being served notice can have 20% of their time job hunting. How is this going to aid Menes productivity?

Don't go to Cambridge, if things go to plan AZ will have a great pipeline, but not enough revenue to defend a takeover. The last restructure was sold to staff as the making it fit for the patent cliff, so can AZ be really trusted on its word. I foresee that 2019, Cambridge site closes, where are you then? You won't have Mene or Pascals severance to fall back on.

As for housing, yes, there are cheaper locations e.g. Haverhill, Duxford and Royston,. But there's going to be a commute with traffic jams and schools that aren't the best. All of this, and stress at a performance driven culture. After all if you move down there, why stay at AZ. After all recently AZ has made a point of not promoting internally, outside is best.

Well good luck to all, may you all get what you want.

Re Debbie at AZ she was moved around to areas they wanted to perform badly so they had a reason for big reorganization or closure.

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/

6da35b6382eea985026c032430d0851a6858ef5.jpg

Absolute Location: http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/6da35b6382eea985026c032430d0851a6858ef...

Don't know what will work here. Tried to join the link together and give again as one link. Hope it works.

Brighton link

And still not spent a penny of the redundancy payment thank you very much.

Couldn't follow your link re:Brighton - can you re-post the full one for us?

Whoever flagged my post about Brighton needs to get a sense of humour. It's the only way to get through it. Been there with AZ and got through it myself.

Welcome to Cambridge

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-26043309.html

Welcome to Hell!

I think I may have something here. I'm on holiday in Brighton at present and found this management consultant. :)

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/6da35b6382eea985026c032430d0851a6858ef...

Always seemed to get promoted to her next level of incompetence before her disastrous legacy was revealed.

Question there is - who hired her into such a position in the first instance? Another example of what was inherently wrong, right there.

"There were a few bad managers at AZ but she out classed th all. Utterly clueless and certainly didn't have a track record of drug discovery"

Absolutely right - totally clueless. I remember being in a meeting with senior people from a company with which AZ had a drug discovery alliance. In addition to senior people from AZ (including Jan Lundberg) and the partner, the meeting also included top asthma KOLs from all over the world. During a really interesting discussion about asthma, Dr Hartman, who was VP for Respiratory and Inflammation at AZ Charnwood at the time, leant across and asked 'what is atopy ?' 'nuff said........

There were a few bad managers at AZ but she out classed th all. Utterly clueless and certainly didn't have a track record of drug discovery.

“Debbie has a strong track record of .... (fill in the gap)

e.g. totally demoralising everyone.

3 years ago she had 0 years of drug development experience....... Fast worker

That'll be the end of them then.... ;-)

Barbara S. Fox, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Avaxia, said, “Debbie has a strong track record of delivering new drugs into the clinic and managing early clinical development. "
Really??

Good luck Avaxia - you'll need it!

I think 21:01 refers to

AstraZeneca veteran Deborah Hartman joins Avaxia
Will lead the development of AVX-470 in ulcerative colitis
Former AstraZeneca (AZ) vice president Dr Deborah Hartman has joined Avaxia Biologics as VP research, replacing Dan Tracey ......

Some good news:

http://www.pmlive.com/appointments/research/2013/march/astrazeneca_veter...

For all those that had the pleasure of working with this person.

Brings back some unpleasant memories

An economy in free-fall. Banks underfunded. Hospital killing people. Our industry in terminal decline.

And British people discussing house prices.

Mene referred to himself as one of those good scientists that had been atteacted to AP and several hundred annoyed people burst out laughing :oD

Exactly. Mene refused to answer the question 'how may staff do you want to relocate' and just answered 'how many staff he expected to relocate',

Let's not forget the empathy Mene showed when announcing the news and his self reference to AZ reecently recruiting 'good scientists'. Still, at least we can all look forward to 'chatting about work with our colleagues' by coffee machines. Worth a move to Cambridge. It was perfcetly feasible and definitely cheaper to develop Alderley Park site even to the extent of putting up new buildings to replace the existing ones. The motive for moving to Cambridge is remove and replace staff at Alderley Park which cannot be done on such a scale without a (ahem..justified) relocation. Pascal has constantly referred to the lack of diversity at Alderley Park .. whatever that refers to. This is how he will achieve it.

This is so funny. Is this your family house ?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/s6p/37913258

30 minutes drive is about 5 miles in Cambridge. I agree there are parts of Norfolk that are still cheap and up and coming. The flood defences may be installed by 2016.

In cambridge it may well cost £450k for a family house but you clearly know nothing about house prices "in the cambridge area" so please don't put your ridiculous posts up!
I have a large 4 bedroom family house in a very nice area with a big garden and good schools/pubs/shops etc that is within a 30min drive of any part of cambridge you would wish to get to and it cost around £200k...2 bedroom flat indeed...you clearly know nothing!

Assuming you can find a house in Cambridge area for sale then its going to be a lot more than £200k. £200k is at best a two bed flat. £450k is a family house. Think London prices for anything you would want to live in. When houses come up for sale they are bought up and converted to student houses.

If you have children the house you find may not be near a school you would want them to go to. Cambridge area has one of the highest shortfalls in school places nationally but does have very good schools with the associated big waiting lists.

Then there is the A14 which is one of the busiest roads in the UK. Commuting into Cambridge is very difficult and again comparible with London. The council discourages cars but encourages cycling and buses in the city.

The good news is that its drier and warmer than Manchester.

Agree with the post below re- selling house. It's no different than if you take a part exchange on something be it house or car etc. You take a hit because you have the security of not having the hassle of selling it yourself. No-one forces you to use Cartus; you are at liberty to try and sell yourself, but if the initial valuation by the estate agent is out and you don't price competitively to start with you could be in for a long wait and a lot of grief. Just be thankful that if you get the offer you have a choice about what to do - not many places offer this any more.

"Let's say your house is worth £200k. You will put it on the market with Cartus (and a flooding of other houses at the same time) and to be competitive might offer 5% off what your house is worth (£190k). Then after 30-45 days they strongly recommend that you reduce it by 10% to attract buyers (£171k). After 90 days cartus will go off and they will value your house which usually is around 10-15% of the latest price (£150k)"

Err - isn't this just one of the 'joys' of selling a house? In your example what makes you think that it was 'worth' £200K - if after 90days it hasn't sold for £171K then the original valuation obviously wasn't accurate. We always like to think that our properties are worth more than they really are. The price someone will pay is what the real value is. With the Cartus deal you actually buy insurance (which might turn out to equate to 5-10% of the real market value - not some useless estate agents initial estimation) that ensures that at your new location you enter the market chain free in a better bargaining position and without the worry that some a*hole isn't going to pull out of buying your house at the last minute.

but for anyone who actually sold their house without moving within AZ the selling price was about 20% below estate agents valuations too.

For the person asking about the relocation policy.. With experience of moving with my husband from Charnwood to Alderley Park. Let's say your house is worth £200k. You will put it on the market with Cartus (and a flooding of other houses at the same time) and to be competitive might offer 5% off what your house is worth (£190k). Then after 30-45 days they strongly recommend that you reduce it by 10% to attract buyers (£171k). After 90 days cartus will go off and they will value your house which usually is around 10-15% of the latest price (£150k). That's what you will be offered (if it's the same as last time - getting 1/4 or 1/5 off the price of your propert is about average). You can challenge their quotes but typically you are compared against neighbouring properties (which were also on through Cartus in our case). You also have one week to accept their valuation and if you reject it, you can't go back so you feel like you should bite the bullet and move on.

On a positive, you do get the price difference if Cartus then sell your house for more. But don't expect much more - in our case we got an extra £3k.

The enhanced relocation sounds good, but in practise after tax, most people lost out in moving to the NW. It will be interesting to see if 60% of people who have just moved, would be prepared to go through this all again.

AND remember you might have a job, but your partner is now looking for work, so getting a mortgage on one salary means you can't afford the same mortgage you had and now you are moving to a more expensive area. So you'll be downsizing. AZ really tried to make it possible but there are things like this that aren't / can't be accounted for.

Never be bitter it just destroys you. You have a couple of years to look for something better, take your time you have this luxury.

If I get the chance to move, and that's a big if, then a house purchase is out the question. Firstly, even if we could sell the one we're in, we couldnt afford one in cambridge. Secondly, this reorganization doesnt solve nor address the underlying problem at AZ i.e. no pipeline. So this mess is just the start and in a few years someone will say we can't afford Cambridge and we will all be out the door. Life's too short to tolerate this nonsense so I'm going before I'm pushed. And they can stuff their severance where the sun don't shine.

Mene mentioned a figure of 60% of those offered a job in Cambridge are expected to take it (take careful note of the wording). The up coming selection process will be brutal, HR will be stock-piling the white wash as we speak. I suspect there will be an awful lot of empty positions moving down to cambridge.

Wrong! Purchase of CAT was almost entirely funded by the sale of the royalty stream from Humira to Royalty Pharma. From the case study on the RP website:

"AZ’s strategic interest in CAT was to acquire the antibody technology platform and pipeline drugs. Nonetheless, in acquiring CAT for $1.3bn, AZ also purchased a royalty interest in Abbott’s Humira®, a non-core passive financial asset. Partnering with RP optimized AZ’s acquisition of CAT:

RP acquired the Humira® royalty for $700mm in cash up-front.

As a result, AZ’s net acquisition cost of CAT’s technology platform and pipeline was ultimately reduced to only $300mm after adjusting for the $700mm value of the Humira® royalty and approximately $300mm of CAT cash."

AZ are working on the assumption that 60% of those offered a move to Cambridge will accept. This is the figure Mene has told senior staff. He is in for a surprise.

For the record, AZ does not buy houses for those who choose to move. There is a carrot, but not a like-for-like purchase entirely at AZ's expense. That carrot didn't match the differential between EMids and NW in the UK. Sure won't match that between NW and Cambridge if the same is on the table.

I don't think the poster at 21.04 was suggesting that a lot of these roles will be filed by ex-AP folks. It will be interesting to see how easily AZ will be able to recruit in Cambridge though. Probably not as easy as they think.

What a wonderfully logical breakdown. Wake up math-boy. AZ isn't moving to Cambridge so it can buy 1000 people expensive houses! You'll be left behind. Sort of like the spaceship with hairdresser ant telephone sanitisers.

So does anyone want to speculate what the new Cambridge organisation will look like?

Here are the facts:

Alderley Park:
2850 jobs currently
700 jobs to stay at AP
A minimum 550 jobs made redundant
Up to 1100 roles move to Cambridge
Up to 300 roles move overseas
Up to 80 jobs move to Macc site

New Cambridge site:

360 jobs from London HQ
540 jobs from MedImmune Cambridge
1100 jobs recruited from former AP staff or elsewhere.

So, in my opinion, the 1100 could breakdown as follows:

Oncology 250
Gmed 250
GSA/DMPK 200
PHC 100
Others 100
Support 100

In my experience most lab-based scientists knew the values and limitations of their in vivo models very well - but higher levels insisted on this that or the other animal model of whatever because it was the essential disease model.