Pfizer

Pfizer Incorporated, is a pharmaceutical company, ranking number one in sales in the world. The
company is based in New York City, with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut. It produces
Lipitor (atorvastatin, used to lower blood cholesterol); the neuropathic pain/fibromyalgia drug Lyrica
(pregabalin); the oral antifungal medication Diflucan (fluconazole), the antibiotic Zithromax
(azithromycin), Viagra (sildenafil) for erectile dysfunction, and the anti-inflammatory Celebrex
(celecoxib) (also known as Celebra in some countries outside the USA and Canada, mainly in South
America). Its headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

Mergers:

Warner-Lambert / Parke-Davis / Agouron

Warner-Lambert was founded as a drug store in 1856 in Philadelphia by William R. Warner. Inventing a
tablet-coating process gained Warner a place in the Smithsonian Institution. Parke-Davis was founded in
Detroit in 1866, by Hervey Parke and George Davis. Warner-Lambert took over Parke-Davis in 1976, and
acquired Wilkinson Sword in 1993 and Agouron in 1999. In 2000 Pfizer took over Warner-Lambert.[14]

Pharmacia / Upjohn / Searle

Searle was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1888. The founder was Gideon Daniel Searle. In 1908, the
company was incorporated in Chicago. In 1941, the company established headquarters in Skokie, Illinois.
It was acquired by the Monsanto Company, headquartered in St. Louis, in 1985.

The Upjohn Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo,
Michigan by Dr. William E. Upjohn, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school. The
company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily
digested.

In 1995, Upjohn merged with Pharmacia, to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. Pharmacia was created in April
2000 through the merger of Pharmacia & Upjohn with the Monsanto Company and its G.D. Searle unit.
The merged company was based in Peapack, New Jersey. The agricultural division was spun off from
Pharmacia, as Monsanto, in preparation for the close of the acquisition by Pfizer.

In 2002, Pfizer merged with Pharmacia. The merger was again driven in part by the desire to acquire full
rights to a product, this time Celebrex (celecoxib), the COX-2 selective inhibitor previously jointly
marketed by Searle (acquired by Pharmacia) and Pfizer. In the ensuing years, Pfizer commenced with a
massive restructuring resulting in numerous site closures and loss of jobs including: Terre Haute, IN;
Holland, MI; Groton, CT; Brooklyn, NY; Sandwich, UK and Puerto Rico.

In 2008, Pfizer announced 275 job cuts at the Kalamazoo manufacturing facility. Kalamazoo was
previously the world headquarters for the Upjohn Company.
SUGEN

SUGEN, customarily written with capital letters, was founded in 1991 in Redwood City, California, as a
partnership between the laboratories of Joseph Schlessinger at New York University Medical School and
Axel Ullrich at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, with Steven Evans-Freke as a third co-founder.
The name, SUGEN, is derived from combining the first "S" in Schlessinger followed by the "U" in Ullrich
with "GEN" - a commonly used suffix by biotech companies (short for "GENetics" or "GENesis"). The
focus of the enterprise was to develop drugs targeting intracellular signaling pathways to treat cancer.
Specifically, the company sought to discover competitive ATP small-molecule kinase inhibitors which
block common cancer pathways. Pharmacia acquired SUGEN in 1999, which merged with the
pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Company in 2000 and was purchased by Pfizer in 2003. In 1999,
Pharmacia advanced two of SUGEN's lead compounds into clinical trials for colon cancer: SU5416
(Semaxanib) and SU6668; the trials were discontinued but a third and closely related compound named
SU11248 was pursued. SUGEN's laboratories were closed in 2003 as part of the reorganization following
Pfizer's purchase of Pharmacia. From the acquisition, SUGEN compounds SU11248 and SU14813 entered
Pfizer's pipeline.[15][16] In January 2006, SU11248 was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) for treatment of GIST and RCC, and it is now marketed as Sutent (sunitinib). Sutent
is packed by Plant in Ascoli Piceno, Italy.

Wyeth

On 26 January 2009, after more than a year of talks between the two companies, Pfizer agreed to buy
pharmaceuticals rival Wyeth for a combined US$68 billion in cash, shares and loans, including some
US$22.5 billion lent by five major Wall Street banks. The deal would cement Pfizer's place as the largest
pharmaceutical company in the world, with the merged company generating over US$20 billion in cash
each year, and represents the largest corporate merger since AT&T and BellSouth's US$70 billion deal in
March 2006.[17] Wyeth's management team is expected to depart following the merger. The combined
company could save US$4 billion annually through the streamlining of operations; however, as part of
the deal, both companies must repatriate billions of dollars in revenue from foreign sources to the
United States, which will result in higher tax costs. The acquisition was completed on October 15, 2009
making Wyeth a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer.

Critics of the merger

The merger received a vast array of criticism. Harvard Business School’s Gary Pisano told The Wall Street
Journal:

The record of big mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma has just not been good. There’s just been an
enormous amount of shareholder wealth destroyed.

The Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia mergers do not appear to have achieved gains for shareholders so
it is unclear who will benefit from the Wyeth-Pfizer merger to many critics.