Merck & Co., Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, and is named for Merck Group, founded in Germany in 1668, of whom it was once the American arm. The company does business as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada.
Merck & Co. was originally established as the American affiliate of Merck Group in 1891. Merck develops and produces medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies and animal health products. It has multiple blockbuster drugs or products each with 2020 revenues including cancer immunotherapy, anti-diabetic medication and vaccines against HPV and chickenpox.
The company is ranked 71st on the 2022 Fortune 500 and 87th on the 2022 Forbes Global 2000, both based on 2021 revenues.
The company’s milestones:
1891: Merck & Co. was founded in the United States by George Merck on January 1,1891, as the US subsidiary of the Merck Group. Until 1917 it became an independent company.
1898: Merck & Co. sold the first commercially used smallpox vaccine in the United States.
1899: The company published its first Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, which remains one of the most widely used medical texts (an online version can be searched at the Merck web site).
1927: Company merges with Powers-Weightman-Rosengarten and is incorporated as Merck & Co., Inc.
1933: Established a large laboratory and recruited prominent chemists and biologists to produce new pharmaceutical products.
1953: Merck & Co. merged with Philadelphia-based Sharp & Dohme, Inc., becoming the largest United States drugmaker.
1963: Merck manufactured the first measles vaccine.
1965: Merck acquired the Montreal-based company Charles E. Frosst Ltd and created the Canadian subsidiary and pharmaceutical research company, Merck-Frosst Canada Inc.
1984: Honran claimed Merck had become the largest United States-based manufacturer of drugs in the three largest markets--the United States, Japan, and Europe.
1988: Vasotec becomes Merck's first billion-dollar-a-year drug.
1998: In the January 12, 1998 issue of Fortune magazine, Merck was named one of the Top 100 companies to work for in America.
2009: In November 2009, Merck & Co. completed a merger with Schering-Plough in a US$41 billion deal.
2017: The company had revenues of $40.1 billion.
2018: Merck began the submission process for a Biologics License Application to the Food and Drug Administration under the Breakthrough Therapy Designation for an investigational vaccine, called V920, to fight the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus.
2020: In June, Merck acquired Themis Bioscience, a company focused on vaccines and immune-modulation therapies for infectious diseases including COVID-19 and cancer.
According to Wikipedia & zippia.com
