Merck KgaA (MKGAF.PK) is relocating some of its accounting and bookkeeping operations to service centers in Poland
By 2020, more than 130 jobs will move to Wroclaw, Poland and Manila, Philippines. Some of those jobs, which are based in Germany, will be offset by the creation of 25 new jobs. Eighty jobs within the accounting solutions and services division will stay in Darmstadt.
“In recent year, we have set up two shared service centers in Wroclaw and Manila,” said Marcus Kuhnert, Merck KGaA’s finance chief, in a statement. “As a next step, we want to concentrate our accounting and bookkeeping here to better meet the needs of the business.”
Merck KGaA restructured the company this spring under three legal entities, pharmaceuticals, life science and performance materials. In May, it indicated it would restructure its technology infrastructure and create three separate enterprise resource planning systems, which will tie many of its business processes together in a common infrastructure.
Although the company declined to indicate how much savings the relocation will create, Wimal Kapadia, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. told The Wall Street Journal that because of lower labor costs in Poland and the Philippines, several million euro-per-year savings was possible. “Merck is doing a lot of reorganization,” Kapadia said. “Finance is a low hanging fruit to reduce the cost base.”
Merck KGaA is not the only company that hopes to decrease costs by utilizing shared service centers. Bayer AG (BAYZF), which is in the middle of buying U.S.-based Monsanto Co., runs shared service centers in Poland, Manila, China, the U.S. and Singapore.
Source: https://www.biospace.com/News/130-jobs-affected-as-merck-kgaa-relocates/466353
Photo: mat. prasowe/Merck