In the third quarter, Seoul-based Samsung Group announced a $22 billion investment over the next three years in biopharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars as it seeks ways to drive future growth. The company said it expected to add 40,000 employees in that time. While details of the plans were not disclosed, Samsung said it will also continue to invest in its contract manufacturing and biosimilar businesses.

In Europe, Boehringer Ingelheim (Ingelheim, Germany) will build a new biologicals development center at its R&D site in Biberach, Germany, at a cost of €230 million ($268 million). The center will open in stages beginning in 2020 and will employ 500 employees.

Two pharmas announced the creation of new business units. Paris-based Sanofi will launch two new business units in 2019—one focused on China and emerging markets and the other on primary care. The company just opened a global R&D operations hub in Chengdu with a $77 million investment to support clinical R&D. The new primary care unit will combine Sanofi's diabetes and cardiovascular unit and established products unit portfolios, and will focus on mature markets. And Novo Nordisk will establish a new business development unit in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to identify new therapeutic approaches via collaborations with academic and biotech partners in four new translational R&D centers, scheduled to open this year. Two of the centers will be located in Denmark, one will be in Indianapolis and one in Oxford.

Takeda Pharmaceutical said it will move its US headquarters from Deerfield, Illinois, to the greater Boston area after its acquisition of Shire closes in the first half of 2019. Takeda currently has 5,000 US employees. The move allows the company to bring its US business units in closer proximity; it acquired Ariad Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in February 2017.

Companies announcing headcount reductions in the third quarter include Roche's Genentech unit (223 employees at its South San Francisco headquarters), Novartis (140 employees at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Emeryville, California), Aquinox Pharmaceuticals (30 employees, or 53% of its workforce) and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (40 employees, or 6% of its workforce, in connection with its plan to split into two publicly traded companies).

Advertised biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector jobs in the job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology were slightly up in the third quarter of 2018 (Tables 1 and 2) compared with the previous quarter (Nat. Biotechnol. 36, 773, 2018).

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies
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Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies
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