Employees of pharmaceutical company Merck Serono are reportedly campaigning for the company to expand its venture operations in Switzerland, after the company said it would shut down its Swiss base.
The employees have requested the company to set up a CHF100m (€104m) venture capital fund, according to news provider Geneva Lunch, more than triple the company’s present €30m Entrepreneur Partnership Program, which funds the company’s Swiss-based employees to set up businesses. This was one of three proposals, which also included to keep the Geneva office open, with employees accepting salary cuts and a two-year increase in efficiency of 25% to 30% and also asking the group to maintain a Swiss high-tech research centre in Geneva with 300 employees, Geneva Lunch added.
Stefan Oschmann, chief executive of Merck Serono, said: "We are grateful to employees for their proposals, made via employee representatives and the trade union Unia, or individually. We also wish to thank them for their open, constructive and responsible attitude during this difficult time. We wish to assure them that each of the proposals received will be examined with the greatest of care and, insofar as the constraints to which we are subject will allow, they will be taken into account in determining our final decision on the restructuring plan for Merck Serono’s operations in Switzerland."