Drugmaker Roche’s US Biotech Unit Pulls DEI Targets From Website

(Bloomberg) — Roche Holding AG’s US unit removed diversity and inclusion targets from its website, the latest in a series of publicly traded companies to bow to US President Donald Trump’s push against equal opportunity programs. 

Genentech had aimed by this year to double Black and Hispanic representation of directors and officers and extended leadership, among a range of commitments listed on reports and a version of its diversity website archived by the Wayback Machine. 

The biotech unit also pledged to craft inclusive research action plans for all medicines in development and require commitments from suppliers with requests for proposals of $500,000 and more, according to the web scrapes. 

As of Thursday, the link to Genentech’s diversity and inclusion report led to a page that said it was under construction. 

A spokesman for Genentech said the drugmaker is taking time to understand any potential implications of executive orders and other actions by the new US administration. Roche’s programs in Europe, meantime, remain unchanged. 

Trump’s crackdown on DEI has pushed public companies across industries to shift once-vaunted targets. Last week, Accenture Plc abandoned its diversity goals, and this week Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reversed its diversity rule for the boards of companies it helps take public. 

The leadership of the Swiss billionaire family that controls Roche has publicly disparaged Trump. 

Vice-Chairman Andre Hoffmann, one of two family members on the supervisory board, called the US president a “corrupt old man” in an interview published by the Financial Times last month. Hoffmann advocated for social responsibility at a panel at Harvard University last year.

Pushing Back

DEI is “central to Roche’s success,” the company said in its annual report issued Jan. 30. “We work hard to create a safe environment within Roche, where all voices are heard in order to foster innovation.”

Roche’s ability to push back may be limited, however, because Genentech is a government contractor. In an executive order issued Jan. 21, the administration said that contractors would need to certify that they didn’t operate programs “promoting DEI that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws.” 

Roche’s crosstown rival Novartis AG, also a federal contractor, also briefly pulled its DEI page from its US website, before reinstating it with few specific references to diversity.

Novartis has pledged to work toward pay equity and to achieve gender balance in management under the umbrella of the United Nations’ Equal Pay International Coalition, though its promise includes fewer concrete targets than those formerly listed by Roche. 

“Our commitment to our programs and providing equal opportunities for all our employees remains strong now and will continue,” a spokeswoman for Novartis said in a statement. Both drugmakers said they comply with the laws of all jurisdictions in which they operate.

Clinical Trials

Novartis’s German-language Swiss website still includes broad commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, as do Roche’s global site and the Genentech one. 

California-based Genentech hired its first chief diversity officer, Quita Highsmith, in 2020, and the unit has issued diversity and inclusion reports annually since then. The reports can no longer be found on the drugmaker’s website.

The 2023 report, the most recent archived on the Wayback Machine, shows the unit had succeeded in boosting diversity among its interns and postdocs more than at the higher levels of leadership. About four-fifths of its bidding suppliers also had diversity and inclusion commitments that year. 

The company had also submitted 20 diversity action plans as of 2023 with the Food and Drug Administration, an attempt to address a longterm issue of clinical trials leaving out patients from minority populations. 

–With assistance from Siraj Datoo.

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