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Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Merck is 2nd-largest drug company ... for now

This year, the rankings of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have seemed to change as often as the AP college football poll.

Yesterday’s closing of the $41 billion deal between Merck & Co. Inc. and Schering-Plough Corp. made Merck the world’s second-largest drug company, behind Pfizer Inc.

IMS Health, which ranks the industry by pharmaceutical sales, lists New York-based Pfizer with 2008 sales of $43.4 billion. Pfizer only got bigger this year, having recently acquired Wyeth, which had 2008 sales of $15.7 billion. Wyeth employs about 4,500 people in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The previous No. 2 drug company had been London-based GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., which employs more than 5,000 in the Philadelphia area. IMS Health lists GlaxoSmithKline’s 2008 sales as $36.5 billion, putting it just ahead of Novartis and its $36.2 billion in sales.

Add Merck’s $26.2 billion in sales to Schering’s $18.5 billion in sales and you get the new No. 2 company with a total of $44.7 billion.

But Merck, which employs 12,000 in Montgomery County, may not hold onto the No. 2 spot for long. Earlier this year, Roche Holding bought biotech juggernaut Genentech, creating a company with combined 2008 sales of $43.8 billion. Genentech has several blockbuster drugs, including Avastin. If sales trends hold, Roche could leap over Merck as soon as 2010.

Feeling Better

Tenet Healthcare Corp. may only have two hospitals left of the original eight it acquired in Philadelphia in 1998, but those two were bright spots in the company’s latest quarterly results.

The Dallas for-profit hospital operator noted that Philadelphia was one of only two regions in which it reported positive total admissions growth in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. The other was Tenet’s California region, which includes hospitals in Nebraska.

Total admissions at its 51 hospitals were flat at 128,652.

Tenet also noted outpatient visits grew more than 8 percent at Hahnemann University Hospital and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia as well as at hospitals in its Central and Florida regions.

Shares of Tenet closed at $5.40, up 10 cents.

Posted by Mike Armstrong @ 7:11 AM  Permalink | File Under: Pharma, Biotech | Post a comment
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About Mike Armstrong
Mike Armstrong, a business editor and writer for nearly two decades, is the Inquirer's business columnist and PhillyInc blog editor.
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