Boston Scientific cuts staff, local impact unknown

Boston Scientific, which employs more than 5,000 workers in Minnesota, says it will cut as many as 1,300 jobs after losing $1.1 billion in its fourth quarter.

Boston Scientific didn't say where the cuts will come. Vice president Sam Leno would only say during a conference call with investors Thursday that the company intends to divest some businesses and streamline what's left.

"We will not publicly discuss the impacts of these reductions on individual businesses, geographies or specific operating expense categories," said Leno.

Jan Wald, an industry analyst with Noble Financial Group, expects job cuts will reduce administrative and management ranks, rather than in areas such as sales and engineering.

Wald says it's not clear how the job cuts will be distributed geographically.

"There are places where you could think there could be reductions in personnel," he said. "But it's hard, at this point, to try to determine what percentage of that will be [in] Minnesota."

Wald says Boston Scientific CEO Ray Elliot wants to get the company into new businesses, by focusing on issues like women's health.

"More focus outside cardiovascular...stents and cardiac rhythm management devices," he said. "I think if you look at the restructuring, [Elliot's] definitely moving the company in that direction."

Company officials said they consider 2010 to be a rebuilding year, after a $1.7 billion patent payment to Johnson and Johnson. They also said warnings on some of their cardiac rhythm devices have hurt sales and inventory.

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