Sanofi-Aventis Chief Threatens Job Cuts

French life sciences giant Sanofi-Aventis could move jobs out of Germany if the government refuses to change its healthcare policies, chairman Jean-Francois Dehecq said in a magazine interview published Thursday. "We will fight to keep all our factories and our research activities in the industrial park at Hoechst, near Frankfurt, but only if we're treated properly," Dehecq told the German monthly Manager Magazin in an interview published on the magazine's Web site. Dehecq slammed recent German healthcare reforms in which prices for new, innovative patented drugs were pegged to the prices of off-patent generic drugs" The consequence is that prices of generic drugs rise, even though their makers do not put any money into research, while prices for research-intensive innovative medicines fall. That's a disaster," Dehecq said. Asked what that meant for Sanofi-Aventis, the chairman replied: "Quite simply, we won't invest long term in a country where we don't earn any money." But Dehecq sought to calm those fears, pledging no compulsory redundancies until the end of 2007.