It was quite a strange year for our top pharmas. A top 10 company spun off its innovative pharma unit, the biggest acquisition came from a company at the bottom of our list (Gilead's $11 billion purchase of Pharmasset and its hepatitis C pipeline), and the biggest launch came from a company that's not even in the Top 20: Vertex, which posted almost $1 billion in revenues in seven months for HCV treatment Incivek.

The ranks were relatively stable, with minor shifts based on acquisition integrations. More often,  exchange rate fluctuations tweaked the results a bit, boosting companies that would otherwise look anemic or worse. The euro and krone both rose 5%, the British pound was up 4%, the yen was up 9%, and the Swiss franc blew up 18%.

For USD-reporting companies, total revenues rose 6% to $301.5 billion. The days of double-digits are long gone . . .

—Gil Y. Roth
Editor

Contributors
Editor: Gil Y. Roth
Associate Editor: Kristin Brooks
Contributing Editor: Derek B. Lowe

All profiles written by Gil Roth, except Astellas and Daiichi-Sankyo, by Kristin Brooks
The Lowe Down capsules written by Derek Lowe (http://pipeline.corante.com)
Pipeline information compiled by Kristin Brooks
Revenue information compiled by Gil Roth

Photo courtesy of Eli Lilly & Co.

Top 20 Pharmaceutical Companies 
based on 2011 pharma revenues

1	Pfizer	$57,747
2	Novartis	$47,935
3	Sanofi	$42,779
4	Merck	$41,289
5	GlaxoSmithKline	$35,594
6	AstraZeneca	$32,981
7	Johnson & Johnson	$24,368
8	Eli Lilly & Co.	$22,608
9	Abbott Laboratories	$22,435
10	Bristol-Myers Squibb	$21,244
11	Takeda Pharma	$17,257
12	Teva	$16,689
13	Boehringer-Ingelheim	$14,058
14	Bayer Schering	$13,853
15	Astellas	$12,311
16	Daiichi-Sankyo	$11,338
17	Otsuka Pharmaceutical	$9,935
18	Gilead Sciences	$8,102
19	EISAI	$7,710
20	Mylan	$6,106

Note: In all Top Company profiles, dollar amounts are in millions.