About a year ago, RealNetworks said the elimination of about 10 percent of its workforce officially marked the end of a difficult restructuring period, one that saw nearly 400 layoffs since 2009 and left the digital-media pioneer more focused, efficient, and ready for the future.

Turns out that was just a prelude.

On Thursday, the dot-com era survivor announced it was selling a chunk of its video software and some patents to Intel for $120 million. The deal, which significantly boosts RealNetworks’ cash reserves, also sent its stock price (NASDAQ: RNWK) rocketing up by a third. And it’s a signal of things to come as new CEO Thomas Nielsen repositions Real to focus on a smaller set of businesses.

Nielsen, a former VP at Adobe, joined RealNetworks in November after what founder and chairman Rob Glaser called the most exhaustive hiring process he’d seen in his career. Since then, Nielsen says, he went through a “bottom-up” review of everything the company did, and came away surprised at the sprawling businesses the company had been chasing.

Thomas Nielsen

If he had to give an elevator pitch for RealNetworks’ businesses, Nielsen joked, it would have to be in a very tall building. That won’t be the story in the future, however—Nielsen says the next several months will showcase more changes that reflect his strategy to refocus RealNetworks. And there is very little that is off the table.

“I’m basically turning over all the rugs within the company right now and looking at where there is value in each of our businesses—which ones will be strategic moving forward, and which ones won’t,” Nielsen says. “It’s very unlikely that this is a one-time transaction. On the same level here, I’m not trying to sort of break up the company into little pieces … My job, and what I’m doing here over the next 12 to 18 months, is really to focus the company and be really good about not being in 26 businesses, but being really good about one vision and one mission.”

The stock price shows how welcome the approach is on Wall Street. But new signs of life at RealNetworks will also probably be welcomed within the overall tech and business communities in the Seattle area. Real has produced plenty of notable alums over the years—including a U.S. senator!—and was once among the calling cards of a vibrant tech scene in the Emerald City.

In more recent years, the company has been kind of a question mark. Its once widely used media player software was bypassed by competitors even as Web and mobile video and music consumption skyrocketed, its Rhapsody music joint venture was spun out, and consumer offerings in cloud services and gaming were getting a new focus.

The game unit, GameHouse, has been discussed as a spin-of candidate in the past. But under new president Matt Hulett, GameHouse has focused heavily on the rapidly growing social games business, as AllThingsD’s Tricia Duryee detailed recently.

Asked about GameHouse’s future, Nielsen first talked about the ways that gaming was going through massive transformations in audience, distribution, and business models with the spread of social and mobile platforms. He also said that the company was “firing on all cylinders on social and mobile, and we have several things coming out over the next few months that will fuel that.”

At the same time, he said it’s still too early to tell how that fits into the company’s long-term plans.

“If RealNetworks becomes a powerhouse in gaming, then GameHouse should belong there. And if we decide to take a very different direction, then we will explore options like—I do realize that previous management looked at spinning it off,” Nielsen says. “It’s not off the table, but nothing’s off the table right now. It goes back to focus. I don’t think we can be in the gaming business and the potato-chip factory business and the networking business.” (No, they don’t really own potato-chip factories).

The sale of the RealNetworks’ video codec software, which makes those files easier to stream, means seven employees from that unit will be joining Intel. Nielsen acknowledged that the rather large restructuring he’s talking about would result in cutting some jobs, but he said the idea is to grow the remaining businesses rather than just getting smaller overall.

“I don’t have a target, but what I do know is that you don’t cut your way to growth,” he says.

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Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW), the New York parent company of Maynard, MA-based Monster.com, the jobs and recruiting site, said in a regulatory filing that it has laid off about 400 employees, or 7 percent of its worldwide staff of 5,700.

The layoffs include fewer than 100 job cuts in Massachusetts, according to the Boston Business Journal. No more specifics on that were available.

In the Form 8-K, Monster Worldwide says it is taking a “series of strategic restructuring actions” in 2012 to invest in marketing and sales and “improve its long-term growth prospects and profitability.” The company says it is consolidating some office facilities as part of the restructuring.

Monster reported fourth-quarter 2011 revenues of $250 million and a $13 million profit. The company made a $46 million profit for the year, compared to a loss of $9 million in 2010. Monster’s stock is down about 13 percent to $7.80 this morning.

Last spring, Monster.com spoke with me about its recent efforts in mobile apps and social media partnerships. The company has been investing heavily in R&D to keep up with a slew of newer, hip competitors.

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U.K.-based drug giant AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) is planning to lay off 135 employees at its facility in Westborough, MA, starting at the end of May and continuing through the end of 2011. The news was reported today by the Boston Business Journal, which cites a notice to state labor officials. The Westborough plant, which makes supply and packaging for allergy and asthma drugs, among other products, went through a previous round of layoffs in 2009, according to the report. Before that, AstraZeneca employed some 1,000 workers in the state between the Westborough plant and an R&D center in Waltham, MA. The new layoffs are part of a broader corporate restructuring (including 3,500 job cuts worldwide) that was announced in early 2010.

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There was good news and bad news in the Boston life sciences scene this past week. Some companies announced layoffs and restructuring, while others attracted funding and won regulatory approval.

—Sunovion Pharmaceuticals of Marlborough, MA, nabbed FDA approval for Latuda (lurasidone HCl), its once-daily, oral tablet for treating schizophrenia. The drug is expected to hit the market in early 2011.

—Boston-area Energesis Pharmaceuticals is looking for ways to tap into brown fat cells, which are found in humans and animals and thought to boost human metabolic function, for developing drugs that fight obesity. The startup recently won $50,000 from the business competition MassChallenge, and is seeking funding to amp up its drug discovery efforts.

—Major restructuring news came from Weston, MA-headquartered Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), the world’s top maker of multiple sclerosis drugs. The drug developer’s plans include laying off most of the workers at its San Diego facility, consolidating its Waltham, MA, and Wellesley, MA, sites in Weston and Cambridge, MA, rearranging the management layers, and leaving sales and marketing efforts for its blockbuster drug rituximab (Rituxan) to its partner Genentech. All told, about 650 positions will be cut, about 300 of which will come at the San Diego site. Biogen CEO George Scangos is looking to shape the company into something more like a biotech, rather than a pharma giant, and remove its interest in cancer and cardiosvascular drugs to focus more closely on the field of neurology, Ryan wrote in a follow-up piece.

—Karyopharm Therapeutics, a Newton, MA-based biotech focusing on treatments for cancer, autoimmune disease, and HIV, announced it had brought in $20 million in Series A money. The startup, founded in 2009, plans to put the money towards developing its technology, which is designed to flag major tumor suppressor and growth regulatory proteins to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy cells, for a clinical trial against an unspecified cancer target.

—In more layoff news, Cambridge-based Acceleron Pharma revealed that it was shrinking its workforce by about 40 percent, or 57 positions, according to a report in the Boston Globe. The staff cuts came after a recently announced partnership with U.K.-based Shire. Acceleron trimmed jobs across all of its disciplines, in order to keep its edge in manufacturing, discovery research, protein engineering, and clinical development.

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The question with the life sciences roundup this week is not so much, “Where to begin?” as it is “Where can we resume?” With the closure of Biogen Idec’s San Diego operation, local business leaders say it’s now a matter of picking up the pieces and starting over.

— Weston, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) said it plans to close down its San Diego cancer R&D center as part of a major restructuring in which it is cutting 13 percent of its workforce and getting rid of 11 drug development programs.

—Biogen Idec CEO George Scangos, who took the helm less than four months ago, told Xconomy’s Ryan McBride he wants to make Biogen more like a biotech and less like a pharmaceutical firm. As part of that, Scangos is divesting the company’s cancer and cardiovascular drug pipelines to focus on developing drugs for neurological disorders.

—Reaction among local business leaders in San Diego tended to be on the fatalistic side—or maybe just pragmatic, with Biocom CEO Joe Panetta saying the local talent cut loose will go on to start new San Diego biotech companies. Still, Idec Pharmaceuticals founder Ivor Royston voiced a common sentiment, telling The San Diego Union-Tribune, “It’s disappointing that we can’t develop a major pharmaceutical company that stays here.”

—On the plus side, San Diego’s Cadence Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CADX) won FDA approval to begin selling an intravenous form of the pain reliever acetaminophen (Ofirmev) for use in hospitals. Cadence said it plans to introduce the drug in the U.S. by the end of March.

—Luke profiled RF Surgical Systems, a Bellevue, WA-based company with an engineering center in San Diego, which is developing surgical sponges with radio-frequency tags embedded that makes it easier to track the dozens of sponges that might be used in surgery.

—Synthetic Genomics‘ founding CEO, J. Craig Venter, explained to scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, how rapid sequencing of genes could help the space agency better select astronauts who can cope with confinement in space during long flights.

—The TEDMED conference returned to the San Diego area last week, with dozens of talks over the four-day event. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, says approximately 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans today originated in wild or domestic animals.

—San Diego-based Adventrx Pharmaceuticals (NYSE Amex: ANX) submitted a new drug application to the FDA for vinorelbine, its reformulated chemotherapy drug.

—Good news for San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LGND): Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare approved partner GlaxoSmithKline’s application for eltrombopag (Revolade), a drug developed to treat a blood disorder called chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP).

—David Schlotterbeck said he’s retiring on February 28 as chairman and CEO of San Diego-based CareFusion (NYSE: CFN).

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[Corrected 11/04/10, 9:25 am to reflect merger] When Cambridge, MA-based Biogen consummated its merger with San Diego’s Idec Pharmaceuticals in November 2003, Executive Chairman William H. Rastetter said, “Based on our existing collaboration in oncology, we knew that this combination would be an excellent fit, both operationally and culturally,” according to a statement issued at the time.

Now, just seven years after closing the $6.8 billion deal, Biogen Idec said yesterday it plans to shut down its San Diego research and corporate campus, which focused on cancer drug development, and lay off most of its San Diego employees. Rastetter, who was Idec Pharmaceutical’s founding CEO (and who joined Venrock’s Palo Alto, CA, office in 2006), declined to comment yesterday.

Other local business leaders said the shutdown is both a sign of the times, and a pattern that has become all-too-familiar among the venture-backed companies that often shut down or depart San Diego’s “grow to sell” market.

“I can fully understand why they decided to do it,” said Julie Meier Wright, CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. “It reminds me of some other corporate decisions we’ve seen here, like Gateway, General Dynamics, and even Hughes Aerospace, years ago.” Biogen Idec, she added, is “a first-rate company, and ideally their people will be absorbed here in San Diego.”

Biocom CEO Joe Panetta sounded a similar theme when I caught up with him yesterday during an all-day conference the local life sciences industry group had organized to focus on human resources training.

“From a historical standpoint, it’s sad to see that one of the original biotech companies in San Diego is now closing its doors here,” Panetta said. But he also noted that a recurring theme of the HR conference was the challenge to find experienced and highly talented employees in the life sciences. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s the story of the biotech industry in San Diego,” Panetta said. It’s happened before, and I can point you to any number of people who were laid off and went on to start great biotech companies.”

Panetta added, “This closure to me is not indicative of … Next Page »

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Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HALO) said it plans to decrease research relating to the discovery and preclinical assessment of new compounds in a strategic refocusing that will require laying off about 30 workers, or 25 percent of the company’s workforce. Halozyme said it is focusing its resources on developing and commercializing three compounds already in clinical trials—a rapid-acting insulin product for treating diabetes, and two enzyme compounds.

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Earlier this year, Salem, NH-based semiconductor company AmberWave Systems Corp quietly shut its doors, and a new company called AmberWave, Inc. has been formed with its assets, according to multiple sources close to the companies.

The news comes to light after an SEC filing on Thursday revealed that AmberWave, Inc., incorporated this year, had raised $800,000 in equity-based funding from one unnamed investor. When I called to follow up that lead, multiple sources noted that AmberWave Systems, whose technology involved “strained silicon” that makes silicon chips faster and more efficient, had closed several months ago. One source then indicated that a group that included at least some employees from the defunct company had purchased the assets of the original firm and used them to reincorporate AmberWave, Inc.

If this is true, it is a likely a significant write off for the original company’s venture backers. The AmberWave Systems website says it raised $91 million and that its investors include 3i, Adams Capital Management, Arch Venture Partners, The Hillman Company and TeleSoft Partners. Our sources did not reveal how much the new owners paid for the assets of AmberWave Systems—but if the new funding amount is any indication, it was likely a tremendous markdown on previous valuations.

While none of these details were immediately confirmed on the record by company leadership or one of its venture backers that we tried to contact, the SEC filing for the newest AmberWave funding lists the same address in Salem as AmberWave Systems, which was started in 1998 by MIT professor Eugene Fitzgerald. The only website I can find on the company still lists the firm name as AmberWave Systems Corp.

Leadership changes have also occurred at AmberWave in the past months. Mass High Tech first observed that the regulatory filing for the new funding lists Anthony Lochtefeld as AmberWave’s president and CEO and Richard Faubert as a director. Lochtefeld was previously vice president of research of AmberWave Systems, while Faubert served as president and CEO—titles still on the company’s website. MHT says Lochtefeld confirmed both the name and leadership changes, but he did not comment further on the state of the company.

I could not immediately reach Lochtefeld for comment, but I’ll be sure to report more on this story if I learn anything new.

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San Diego’s Verari Systems, which ceased business in mid-December and laid off more than 200 employees, says it is restarting its blade computer business after an investment group acquired Verari’s assets at auction. An investment group led by the company’s original founder, David Driggers, purchased Verari’s inventory, equipment and technologies, and will support past Verari customers. The restructured company, renamed as Verari Technologies, will resume operations this week with less than a third of its previous workforce.

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Avid Technology (NASDAQ: AVID), the Tewksbury, MA-based maker of media editing software, disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that it will pay out $7 million to $9 million in termination benefits as part of a workforce restructuring plan to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. A spokesperson told the Boston Business Journal that some 120 Avid employees will lose their jobs; the announcement comes a little more than a year after Avid laid off 410 workers, or about 15 percent of its staff at the time. In another recent disclosure, Avid revealed that it plans to move its headquarters from Tewksbury to three office locations in Burlington, MA.

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Everett, WA-based Intermec (NYSE: IN), a maker of radio frequency identification and mobile computing technologies, announced today it is reducing its global workforce by 7 percent, or about 150 full-time positions. The layoffs will be mostly in sales, general, and administrative areas, and are expected to save the company $14 million to $16 million a year. Intermec CEO Patrick Byrne cited economic conditions and uncertainties as reasons for the restructuring.

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Speculation has been rampant in recent months about the future of San Diego’s Forward Ventures, which has been one of the region’s leading life sciences VC firms for more than 15 years.

Partner Joel Martin, who joined Forward in 2001, left the firm in October and another partner, Stuart Collinson, is said to be leaving as well. Both are prominent figures in the biotech industry. Collinson was the chairman and CEO of San Diego’s Aurora Biosciences before joining Forward in 2002, and became a director at Boston’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals after Vertex acquired Aurora Biosciences.

Editor’s note: Story is updated below with more details on Collinson, who plans to remain.

So I sat down with founding partners Stan Fleming and Ivor Royston, who were anxious to dispel rumors about Forward’s future and to set the record straight about the changes underway.

“We’re sometimes amused by the feedback we get from the marketplace,” Fleming says. “Essentially, Forward is here still. We expect to be here for a long time. Our existing funds have a number of years to run, and we’re committed to creating some new funds.”

But as Royston wrote in a newspaper op-ed piece last summer—and as other biotech VCs have been saying as well—the traditional venture model for funding biotech startups is broken. Royston is particularly concerned about a widening “funding gap” for early-stage drug development, as venture capital firms have increasingly focused their investments exclusively on compounds already in or approved for clinical trials. He says the trend stems partly from the recent dearth of IPOs for venture-backed biotechs, which makes it far harder for VCs to recoup their investments in early-stage deals within the 10-year lifespan of most venture funds.

“The business guys have proven pretty conclusively that it’s not working,” Fleming says of VC investments in early-stage biotechs. “It’s requiring some new approaches, particularly on the business side, so we’re not [invested] in these companies forever.”

The changes underway at Forward Ventures are intended to adapt to the new reality, the founders explained. Their basic concept is to go as lean as possible, partly by operating as “virtual” VC investors who outsource as much as possible. “So outsourcing has come to our industry too,” Royston says. “So much of what we do can be done at much lower cost overseas.”

The firm that invested in roughly 66 startups since it was founded in 1993—and which has just over $400 million in assets under management—has eliminated its roster of principals, senior associates, and associates. The partners confirmed that Collinson plans to leave Forward Ventures, but declined to elaborate. Collinson did not respond to an e-mail inquiry yesterday.

Update at 10:40 am 1/7/09:  Collinson contacted me after this story was posted to say he is not, in fact, leaving the firm. He told me, “I am a director of five portfolio companies and am committed to Forward and our LPs to see these companies through to a successful exit.”

Royston, who also contacted me at Collinson’s request, clarified what he told me earlier, saying in an e-mail, “Stuart plans to fulfill his partner responsibilities at Forward Ventures for the life of the Forward Ventures V fund, which is not until 2013. We did not elaborate on any new fund plans that Stuart has. Even if Stuart raises a new fund outside Forward Ventures, he will still have ongoing responsibilities at Forward ventures for his FV5 portfolio companies until 2013.”

In our discussion, Royston described the changes as ”an evolution to new initiatives and to new funds. You cannot be static in this business or else you fail.”

Among their new initiatives is a decision by Royston and Fleming to … Next Page »

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Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TARG) received a harsh blow last week as the FDA declined to approve it sole drug candidate, an antibiotic called oritavancin intended to treat antibiotic-resistant infections like MRSA. Today Targanta announced staff cutbacks intended to help the company conserve capital while it seeks approval for oritavancin in Europe and tries to get the drug back on track for approval in the United States. The company will reduce its workforce by 86 people, or about 75 percent, leaving it with only 27 employees. We have updated Xconomy’s Boston Tech Layoff Tracker with the latest numbers.

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Wilsonville, OR-based InFocus (NASDAQ: INFS), a maker of digital projectors, announced today it is reducing its global workforce by 30 percent, as part of a company restructuring that will span all of 2009. The staff cuts will be effective next month. InFocus president and CEO Bob O’Malley cited the economic downturn and reduced demand for projectors as reasons for the restructuring. The company says it is spending around $1.3 million on severance payments and some $4 million to vacate facility space in Wilsonville. No word yet on exactly how many jobs will be cut.

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Back in August, we wrote about the ongoing struggles of Imperium Renewables, the Seattle-based biodiesel fuel producer that canceled its $345 million IPO, went through several rounds of layoffs, and lost a key contract with Royal Caribbean. Today, Imperium announced a recapitalization involving its existing investors. The majority of the new investment (the value and sources of which were not disclosed) was “used to satisfy its secured project lender, Société Générale, lien holders and unsecured creditors,” according to a company statement. Imperium is also using an independent business-debt restructuring firm to “assist in negotiating with its creditors to settle its remaining creditor obligations to leave the company with sufficient capital to resume operations.”

Given Imperium’s financial problems in the past year, something had to give. Spokesman John Williams said in an e-mail that Imperium “is focused on managing through the challenging time for the industry and positioning the company for long term success.” Imperium’s investors include Technology Partners and Nth Power, who led a $214 million Series B round in February 2007.

Today’s recapitalization is part of a broader restructuring plan to get Imperium back on its feet. “This funding is a significant step in the process we set forth in January to turn this company around, but we still face hurdles as the amount of funding is limited,” said John Plaza, founder and CEO of Imperium, in a statement. “With this recapitalization and cooperation of our creditors, we hope to resume operations as soon as possible.”

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Covidien, the Bermuda-based healthcare products company that is one of the largest life sciences companies in Massachusetts, said today it is implementing a restructuring program that includes projects in all four of its business segments and in corporate. The company didn’t disclose any job cuts, although it said it plans to take a $200 million charge for the program, and that it will save $50 million to $75 million a year once it is completed. Covidien’s four business lines are medical devices, imaging solutions, pharmaceutical products, and medical supplies.

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Novartis (NYSE: NVS) today unveiled a plan to cut some 2,500 job but—despite an ominously worded reference to to the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, which employs 1,300 people in Cambridge, MA—there will be no Massachusetts jobs lost. This according to the Boston Business Journal‘s Mark Hollmer, who writes that some 300 additional Novartis jobs in the state are safe as well.

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In a much-anticipated move, Natick, MA’s Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) announced after the market closed today that it will cut some 2,300 jobs.

The move, which will begin this month and should be largely completed by the end of next year, is part of the company’s effort to cut its operating expenses by about half a billion dollars in 2008 and by another $25 million to $50 million in 2009; the company’s 2007 expenses are about $4.1 billion. In addition to the staff cuts announced today, the company expects that some 2,000 employees will leave Boston Scientific as it completes already announced business divestitures. The company also plans to restructure several of its businesses in order to “leverage resources, strengthen competitive positions, and create a more simplified and efficient business model.”

In the face of weak sales of its defibrillator and stent products, as well as a host of regulatory and legal snarls, Boston Scientific has been hinting for months that cuts were coming. In a great story from yesterday’s Boston Globe, Todd Wallack lays out the various pressures coming to bear on Boston Scientific, whose stock has fallen some 40 percent since the beginning of 2006. The cuts announced today fit with the predictions of the analysts quoted in the piece, who foresaw the elimination of some 2,000 to 3,400 jobs. (If you see wildly different estimates of the percentage of Boston Scientific’s workforce represented by the 2,300 jobs whose elimination was announced today, it’s because many media outlets peg the company’s overall size at 28,000 employees, whereas the company in its announcement puts it at 18,000—I’m pretty sure it’s a typo on Boston Scientific’s part and will update if and when I get any clarification on that.)

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