Pfizer's big moneymakers
Several of Pfizer's most popular drugs contributed mightily to the company's success, and to the job cuts and plant closings announced Monday.
LIPITOR: The anti-cholesterol medication is Pfizer’s top-selling drug, but raninto trouble after rival Merck & Co. lost patent protection on a similar drug, Zocort, last year. Now generics are being manufactured, and insurance carriers are pushing them. Pfeizer’s sales in the United States have dropped 6%, to $1.95 billion.
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The antidepressants is a big moneymaker. But Pfizer lost patent protection last year, and sales sank 79% to $166 million.The blood-pressure medicine brought in $4.9 billion in sales last year. This year, Pfizer’s patent protection ends.It’s one of the country’s best-selling allergy medications, with $1.6 billion in revenue last year, but Pfizer’s patent protection expires this year.Pfizer spent $800 million developing the new anti-cholesterol drug, but scrapped it last year amid questions about its safety.Meanwhile, shortly before Pfizer announced its budget-cutting plan today, another of its big sellers, Viagra, was the focus of a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles. Pfizer made more than $850 million off U.S. sales of the impotence drug in 2005. But this morning, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation sued Pfizer, charging its Viagra ads are misleading and encourage recreational use, which spreads sexually transmitted diseases. Pfizer denies the charges.
Pfizer CEO Jeffery Kindler has announced that 2,410 jobs will be cut in Michigan, taking out three plants in the state. Pfizer has also announced that they will cut a total of 10 000 jobs by next year. The Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, and Plymouth sites are representatives of the world's largest drug manufacturing company. 

A portion of these jobs will be reassigned in Pfizer plants in cities such as La Jolla, CA, Groton, CT, and Sandwich in the United Kingdom. These cuts come after Pfizer's newest drug in development, torcetrapib, was scrapped late last year due to unexpected side effects.

The money spent researching the drug Torcetrapib ended with the loss of millions of dollars. This comes as a bigger blow to the region when coupled with ongoing losses to major car manufacturers in the Detroit area, and Gov. Jennifer Granholm said today, "We’re going to have a whole ‘Stick Around Ann Arbor’ campaign for these employees, because we want them to stay here."

Among the other groups affected are Ann Arbor schools, to whom Pfizer pays millions of dollars, and local businesses. Most employees declined comment, as they are being asked by Pfizer not to talk with the media.