2005 Top Pharma Companies
Welcome to the fifth annual Contract Pharma Top Pharmaceutical & Biopharmaceutical Companies report. Our editorial staff has gathered information from annual reports, interviews, and analyst coverage to compile a list of the previous year's Top 20 players in the Pharma arena.
The Vioxx debacle shook up many companies on the list, starting with Merck (#5), of course. While that company's 2004 sales were pummeled-the drug was withdrawn in the last quarter of the year, but Merck did slip behind J&J (#4)-the chain reaction, both in PR and sales, is clearly shaking our industry up.
Pfizer (#1), which acquired Pharmacia in 2003 in part because of the Celebrex/Bextra Cox-2 franchise, faces an array of challenges the scale of which no Pharma company has ever seen. Being 50% larger than your next closest competitor sure can help sometimes.
The Top 20 ranks see some new faces this year: Sanofi-Aventis, the merger of last year's #7 and #13 companies, has yielded a new #3. The Franco-Prussian druggernaut will stake a long-term claim to the top 3 if Acomplia finds its way to market (and gets cleared for long-term usage).
As I researched the ranks for a company to bring up into the Top 20, I revised my opinion on whether "insulin counts" and brought in Novo Nordisk for the first time (#17). That addition helps round out the Top 20, while other companies still percolate below.
Editor: Gil Y. Roth
Associate Editor: Kristin Brooks
Contributing Editor: Derek B. Lowe
| 1 | Pfizer | $46,133 |
| 2 | GlaxoSmithKline | $31,417 |
| 3 | Sanofi-Aventis | $29,596 |
| 4 | J&J | $22,128 |
| 5 | Merck | $21,494 |
| 6 | AstraZeneca | $21,426 |
| 7 | Novartis | $18,497 |
| 8 | Bristol-Myers Squibb | $15,482 |
| 9 | Roche | $13,840 |
| 10 | Lilly | $13,059 |
| 11 | Wyeth | $13,021 |
| 12 | Abbott | $11,462 |
| 13 | Takeda | $8,538 |
| 14 | Boehringer-Ingelheim | $7,667 |
| 15 | Schering-Plough | $6,417 |
| 16 | Bayer | $5,529 |
| 17 | Novo Nordisk | $4,848 |
| 18 | Schering AG | $4,171 |
| 19 | Sankyo | $4,152 |
| 20 | Merck KgA | $3,907 |
Note: In all Top Company profiles, dollar amounts are in millions.
