Relax everyone, nobody is getting laid off for the holidays. Deals like this take time and Merck is not about to lay off the entire Cubist sales force when we are 2 weeks away from launching Zerbaxa, their field force has no knowledge around the product at all and with Actavis preparing to launch a competitor to Zerbaxa, Merck needs to take full advantage of the first to market position that Zerbaxa has. When Cubist acquired Optimer in July, the Optimer field force continued to work as Cubist employees through the end of the year prior to being laid off and were given generous severance packages.
Merck has additional products of their own in development including Relebactam as well as their own C-diff drug and will likely need to expand their field force to accommodate adding 5 Cubist products into their bag. At present there are only about 170 Cubist CBMs and numbers like that are chump change for a company like Merck to absorb. When Merck acquired Schering Plough it was an entirely different story as there were thousands of reps at Schering. They also have a Hep-C drug coming where many of the Cubist reps with ID background could come in handy. Don't panic, most of you complained about how bad it was here anyway so how much worse do you think it's going to get with Merck?
If we are acquired by Merck and you are retained, which I believe that most will, then you can take comfort that you can stop speculating about being acquired again since it's not likely anyone can purchase Merck. The benefits at Merck are very good.
As far as salaries go, don't kid yourself that your $115K to $130k salaries are that much higher than the tenured hospital reps at Merck get. There will be no drastic reduction in salaries should you be retained.
In the worst case scenario 100% of the field force is laid off and the deal takes only 3-4 months to close and you will be laid off in April and receive a very fair severance package.
More likely scenario is that 70% or more of the Cubist reps will be retained and about half of the RBDs are retained depending on territory location. Determination of who stays and who goes will be based on performance ratings, geography, tenure, and product rankings. If you don't want to stay then by all means stay home all day and watch CNBC for updates.
This acquisition is a good thing, you are just too negative and blind to know it.
Merck has additional products of their own in development including Relebactam as well as their own C-diff drug and will likely need to expand their field force to accommodate adding 5 Cubist products into their bag. At present there are only about 170 Cubist CBMs and numbers like that are chump change for a company like Merck to absorb. When Merck acquired Schering Plough it was an entirely different story as there were thousands of reps at Schering. They also have a Hep-C drug coming where many of the Cubist reps with ID background could come in handy. Don't panic, most of you complained about how bad it was here anyway so how much worse do you think it's going to get with Merck?
If we are acquired by Merck and you are retained, which I believe that most will, then you can take comfort that you can stop speculating about being acquired again since it's not likely anyone can purchase Merck. The benefits at Merck are very good.
As far as salaries go, don't kid yourself that your $115K to $130k salaries are that much higher than the tenured hospital reps at Merck get. There will be no drastic reduction in salaries should you be retained.
In the worst case scenario 100% of the field force is laid off and the deal takes only 3-4 months to close and you will be laid off in April and receive a very fair severance package.
More likely scenario is that 70% or more of the Cubist reps will be retained and about half of the RBDs are retained depending on territory location. Determination of who stays and who goes will be based on performance ratings, geography, tenure, and product rankings. If you don't want to stay then by all means stay home all day and watch CNBC for updates.
This acquisition is a good thing, you are just too negative and blind to know it.