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Print Edition StoriesWednesday, August 19, 2009
Shire to pour $460M, 750 jobs into Lexington
By Mass High Tech staff
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British biopharmaceutical firm Shire plc has announced that it will support its growth with an eight-year plan of investing $460 million and hiring 750 full-time workers, a Shire official confirmed Wednesday. The hiring will occur entirely in the company’s Human Genetic Therapies business unit in its divisional headquarters in Lexington.
The hiring and investment news is an upward adjustment of a February 2008 announcement in which Shire HGT announced its original eight-year plan to invest $394 million to expand the company’s Lexington campus and hire 680 full-time workers. The company’s growth in Lexington is the result of Shire’s decision to keep its footprint in Massachusetts; The commitment of $40.5 million in tax incentives and grants for public infrastructure from the state and the town of Lexington influenced the decision to expand, the company said at the time.
Last week, Shire signed a 15-year lease on the company’s fifth building, a 160,000 square-foot facility, in the Lexington Technology Park. According to Shire spokeswoman Jessica Cotrone, the new facility, housing offices and a laboratory, is expected to be finished in 2012.
Shire HGT, which employs about 675 workers locally and 750 globally as of earlier this year, moved from Cambridge to Lexington in the fall. The company is focused on marketing and developing biological treatments for serious diseases. Shire HGT was formerly Transkaryotic Therapies Inc. before Shire bought the business in 2005.
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