Schering-Plough

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Schering-Plough Corporation
Type Subsidiary
Fate Merged with Merck & Co.
Successor Merck & Co.
Founded 1971 (by merger with Plough, Inc.)
Headquarters Kenilworth, New Jersey
Key people Fred Hassan
Last CEO & Chairman
Industry Pharmaceuticals
Revenue US$ 18.502 billion (2008)
Net income US$ 1.903 billion (2008)
Employees 50,000

Schering-Plough Corporation merged with Merck & Co. on November 4, 2009. It was founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering as Schering AG in Germany. In 1971, the Schering Corporation merged with Plough (founded by Memphis area entrepreneur Abe Plough in 1908 [1]) to form Schering Plough.

Schering Plough manufactures several pharmaceutical drugs, the most well-known of which are the allergy drugs Claritin and Clarinex, and through a collaboration with Merck & Co., Vytorin, an anti-cholesterol drug.

Schering Plough also owns and operates the major foot care brand name Dr. Scholl's and the skin care line Coppertone.

As of June 2005, Schering-Plough had 1.4% market share in the U.S., placing it seventeenth in the top twenty pharmaceutical corporations by sales compiled by IMS Health.

Schering-Plough is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).[2]

Contents

[edit] History

Schering was founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering as Schering AG in Germany.[citation needed]

Following the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered Schering AG's U.S. assets be seized. These became the Schering Corporation. The company was placed under a government administratorship until 1952, when it was released and its assets sold to the private sector.[citation needed]

Plough, Incorporated was founded by the Memphis, Tennessee area entrepreneur Abe Plough in 1908 [2]. He borrowed $125 from his father to start the business at age sixteen. As a one man business, he mixed "Plough's Antiseptic Healing Oil," a "sure cure for any ill of man or beast," and sold it off a horse-drawn buggy.[1] He grew the company through sound management and innovative strategies, with marketing genius.[citation needed]

Plough's acquisitions included St Joseph's Aspirin for children,[1] Maybelline cosmetics, and Coppertone skin care products. Plough also had a broadcasting division, operating radio stations in Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; and Memphis, Tennessee.[citation needed]

In 1971, the Schering Corporation merged with Plough, Inc. At the time of the merger, Abe Plough became Chairman of the combined company.[3]

In 2000, Schering Plough bought a new campus in Summit, New Jersey from Novartis. The company planned to make this location its second-largest corporate complex in the world after completion of its current $20 million renovation.[citation needed]

Schering-Plough was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 and 2005 by Working Mothers magazine.[citation needed]

One of Schering-Plough's plants, in Upper Hutt, New Zealand is the largest single site for the production of veterinary vaccines in the world.[citation needed] This is largely due to the fact that New Zealand's isolation has formed a natural quarantine, leaving the country free of rabies, foot and mouth, scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and many other livestock diseases. It formerly had echinococcosis, but this has been eradicated. The site is known locally as "Coopers Animal Health," a trademark still in use by Schering-Plough in Australia, but not elsewhere.[citation needed]

In March 2007, Schering-Plough Corp. purchased Organon International, the drug unit of Netherlands-based Akzo Nobel, for $14.4 billion, giving the US pharmaceutical company an array of women's health products and numerous late-stage pipelines of experimental medicines.[citation needed]

Organon was founded in 1923 by Dr. Saal van Zwanenberg, the president of Zwanenberg’s Slachterijen en Fabrieken. The company is housed at Zwanenberg’s premises in Oss, the Netherlands. By August 21, 2008, Famvir (famciclovir) was marketed by Schering-Plough; formerly it was marketed by Novartis.[citation needed]

As a result of the acquisition of Organon, Schering-Plough bolstered its animal health business with the Akzo subsidiary Intervet and gained access to human vaccine production through the subsidiary Nobilon.[citation needed]

On March 9, 2009 it was announced that Schering-Plough was to merge with Merck & Co. and through a reverse merger have Merck be a subsidiary of Schering-Plough, which will rename itself Merck.[4][5][6][7]

[edit] Medical products

[edit] Prescription products

[edit] Over-the-counter products

[edit] Veterinary products

[edit] Exercise drug

Schering-Plough has received recent publicity for a new drug AICAR which mimics the effects of exercise, having especially potent effects when used alongside another drug GW1516 developed by GlaxoSmithKline.[citation needed]

[edit] Collaborative research

In addition to internal research and development activities Schering-Plough is also involved in publicly funded collaborative research projects, with other industrial and academic partners. One example in the area of non-clinical safety assessment is the InnoMed PredTox.[9][10]

[edit] Controversy

In 2004, Schering-Plough was accused of marketing gimmicks and payoffs to doctors for prescribing the company's pharmaceutical products.[11]

Schering-Plough entered into a Consent Decree with the FDA on March 6, 2002 due to manufacturing issues with its albuterol inhaler. It was ordered to pay $500 Million US dollars to the US Treasury.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c "Abe Plough (1892-1984)," Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, on line.
  2. ^ "The Pharmaceutical Industry in Figures - 2008 Edition". European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). pp. 49. http://www.efpia.eu/content/default.asp?PageID=559&DocID=4883. Retrieved 2008-08-25. 
  3. ^ Hoover's Profile: Schering-Plough Corporation
  4. ^ Singer, Natasha (March 10, 2009). "Merck to Buy Schering-Plough for $41.1 Billion". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/business/10drug.html?hp. Retrieved 2009-11-14. 
  5. ^ Merck & Co. (November 3, 2009). "Merck and Schering-Plough to Complete Merger Today". Press release. http://www.merck.com/newsroom/news-release-archive/corporate/2009_1103.html. Retrieved 2009-11-13. 
  6. ^ Merck & Co. (November 4, 2009). "New Merck Begins Operations". Press release. http://www.merck.com/newsroom/news-release-archive/corporate/2009_1104.html. Retrieved 2009-11-13. 
  7. ^ Merck & Company, Inc. (November 12, 2009). "Notice of Reorganization Event" (PDF). Posted on Thomson Reuters web site. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjA0NDh8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1. Retrieved 2009-11-13. 
  8. ^ Gupta SK, Ellinwood EH (June 1988). "Liquid chromatographic assay and pharmacokinetics of quazepam and its metabolites following sublingual administration of quazepam" (PDF). Pharm. Res. 5 (6): 365–8. doi:10.1023/A:1015907611170. PMID 3244647. http://www.springerlink.com/content/w35k061536472516/fulltext.pdf?page=1. 
  9. ^ Mattes WB (2008), Public consortium efforts in toxicogenomics, Methods Mol Biol. 2008;460:221-38 [1]
  10. ^ "InnoMed PredTox Member Organizations". http://www.innomed-predtox.com/consortium/members/. Retrieved 2008-08-25. 
  11. ^ Gardiner Harris, "As Doctors Write Prescriptions, Drug Company Writes a Check", New York Times (June 27, 2004)

[edit] External links

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