Smith & Nephew. Smith & Nephew. Smith & Nephew plc is a British-based multinational medical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.[3] It is the world's largest producer of arthroscopy products, second-largest producer of advanced wound management products, third-largest producer of trauma and clinical therapy products and fourth-largest producer of orthopedic reconstruction products.[2] Its products are sold in over 90 countries.[2] History[edit] The company was founded in 1856 by Thomas James Smith of Kingston upon Hull who went into business as a dispensing chemist.[4] A few months before his death in 1896, Smith was joined by his nephew, Horatio Nelson Smith, and the business became known as T.J.
Smith and Nephew.[4] In 1928 the company developed the wound management product Elastoplast. The company acquired Plus Orthopedics, a Swiss orthopedics business, for US$889 million in April 2007[8] and BlueSky, a US wound care business, for $110 million in May 2007.[9] Operations[edit] Shire. Shire plc. Shire Plc is a Jersey-registered, Irish-headquartered global speciality biopharmaceutical company that is the manufacturer of pharmaceuticals.[3] Originating in the United Kingdom with a large operational base in the United States, its brands and products include Vyvanse, Adderall XR, Intuniv, Lialda, Pentasa, Fosrenol, Replagal, Elaprase, VPRIV, Firazyr and Dermagraft.
Shire has its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £11.1 billion as of 26 April 2013, making it the 37th-largest company on the London Stock Exchange.[4] Shire has a secondary listing on NASDAQ. History[edit] Shire was founded by Harry Stratford, Dr James Murray, Dennis Stephens, Peter Moriarty, and Geoff Hall in 1986.[5] It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996.[5] Shire's initial products were calcium supplements (Calcichew-D3) for patients seeking to treat or prevent osteoporosis.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) - global healthcare company. Do more, feel better, live longer. GlaxoSmithKline. The company has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
As of 6 July 2012 it had a market capitalisation of £74.8 billion, the fifth-largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange.[6] It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. In July 2012 GSK pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the United States, and agreed to pay $3 billion in fines, including a criminal fine of $1 billion, in what was the largest health-care fraud case to date in that country and the largest settlement by a drug company. The charges were related to the company's promotion of its anti-depressants paroxetine (marketed in the United States as Paxil) and bupropion (Wellbutrin) for unapproved uses, and its failure to report safety data about rosiglitazone (Avandia), a diabetes drug. Part of the rest of the settlement was related to the company's sales and marketing of an asthma drug, fluticasone/salmeterol (Advair).[7] History[edit]
AstraZeneca - Home. AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca plc[3] is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biologics company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
It is the world's seventh-largest pharmaceutical company measured by 2009 prescription drug sales (after Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline) and has operations in over 100 countries.[4] It has a portfolio of products for major disease areas including cancer, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation.[5] The company was founded in 1999 through the merger of the Sweden-based Astra AB and the UK-based Zeneca Group.[6][7] AstraZeneca has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £39.5 billion as of 23 December 2011, the tenth-largest of any company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange.[8] It has secondary listings on the New York Stock Exchange and the OMX exchange.