ABSTRACT
In 1996, the city of Basel, Switzerland, confronted an economic crisis. With a population of only 200,000, the third-largest city in Switzerland faced massive job losses in the wake of a major merger between its endemic pharmaceutical giants Ciba Geigy and Sandoz. The two former competitors became Novartis and the new CEO, Daniel Vasella, announced that 10,000 jobs would be cut globally, with 3,000 in Switzerland alone (Steck 2006). The merger threatened the region’s economy, as about 13 percent of its workforce was employed in the pharmaceutical sector (Füeg 1996). There was no public plan to accommodate the many specialists potentially flowing into the labor market and hopes were low that Roche, now the only remaining local competitor to Novartis, would be able to absorb the surplus.
