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2010 Top 10 Biopharmaceutical Companies Report

Our rules for inclusion on the Top 10 Biopharma list are as follows: you’re a biopharma company if more than half of your drug revenues — not royalties — come from large-molecule drugs and vaccines. It’s arbitrary, but it’s worked pretty well for the past decade. This year, it means that Roche/Genentech has become the world’s #1 biopharma, marking the first change at the top in 10 years.

The rest of this year’s list is consistent with the previous year’s ranks, which is both a sign of the stability among biopharmas and a sign of the difficulty in commercializing new biologics without a major partner.

Several of the Top 10 are legit takeover targets, but no buyout deal is likely to close before the end of the year, so the biggest opportunity for a change is between the 7 and 8 spots, if Genzyme’s production woes cause enough of a revenue drop to allow CSL to slip by.

10th anniversary note: in our first edition, Amgen was tops with biopharma revenues of $3.2 billion. There are now eight companies with revenues higher than that!

Gil Y. Roth, Editor

Top 10 Biopharmaceutical Companies
01 Roche/Genentech $36,017
02 Amgen $14,642
03 Novo Nordisk $9,566
04 Merck Serono $7,454
05 Baxter BioScience $5,573
06 Biogen Idec $4,247
07 Genzyme $3,562
08 CSL Ltd.* $3,211
09 Allergan $1,310
10 Alexion Pharma $387

Based on 2009 biopharma revenues.*
Note: In all Top Company profiles, dollar amounts are in millions.

* CSL’s financial year ran from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009

Contributors


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

All profiles written by Gil Roth, except Baxter Bioscience by Kristin Brooks

The Lowe Down capsules written by Derek Lowe

All pipeline information compiled by Kristin Brooks

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