Pharmaceutical companies pull back from Greece as country units are folded into regional clusters

Multinational drugmakers are leaving Greece or shrinking their local operations one after another, folding national subsidiaries into multi-country clusters managed from abroad, according to healthreport.gr. The Greek health news outlet reports that the shift has accelerated over recent months and now touches several of the largest companies active in the country.

The latest case is Bristol Myers Squibb. Healthreport.gr reports that Elisavet Prodromou, president of the company's Greek operation, is departing, and that the Greek business is being converted into a European cluster together with Italy and Spain. The outlet describes the BMS move as the event that brought long-standing concern in the sector to the surface, and says other companies are expected to follow the same route.

Cluster conversions replace stand-alone country units

Under a cluster structure, a country loses its separate management organisation and is run from a regional unit covering several markets. Healthreport.gr lists the following changes in the Greek market:

• Bristol Myers Squibb: converted into a European cluster together with Italy and Spain, with president Elisavet Prodromou leaving the company.
• Takeda, Amgen, Sanofi and Astellas: all converted into clusters in recent months, with hundreds of employees pushed out of the market.
• Lundbeck: closed its Greek branch entirely.
• An unnamed company, described as a giant internationally and employing around 250 people in Greece, is expected to move to a cluster model and change its structure in the country completely, according to sources cited by healthreport.gr.

The outlet reports that anxiety inside the sector is intense and that staff are working in a state of insecurity, without knowing what the next day holds. It notes that many of the companies that have already converted to clusters cut their Greek headcount sharply in the process.

Industry warnings to the health ministry

Representatives of the pharmaceutical companies had warned Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis that the measures he adopted for medicines would sooner or later lead both to the withdrawal of critical therapies for patients and to disinvestment by companies in Greece, healthreport.gr writes. According to the same report, the minister at times responded with an ironic tone and mocked the industry representatives, maintaining that pharmaceutical manufacturers would not face a downturn.

Healthreport.gr sets the exits against the government's account of rapid economic growth and argues that the developments show parent companies are no longer choosing Greece for investment. It expects the effect to run through the entire pharmaceutical chain rather than stopping at the companies concerned.

Clinical trials and access to innovative therapies

The conversion of pharmaceutical businesses into clusters run from other countries reduces more than headcount, according to the report. Funding allocated to Greece falls as well, and the number of clinical trials carried out in the country is expected to drop sharply.

The outlet also flags a second consequence for patients: as the corporate presence in Greece shrinks, so does the capacity to make new innovative therapies immediately available to those who need them. Neither the companies named nor the health ministry are quoted directly in the report, which is based on the outlet's own sources.