Glaxosmithkline

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE: GSK NYSE: GSK) is a United Kingdom-based pharmaceutical, biological, and healthcare company. GSK is the world's second largest pharmaceutical company and a research-based company with a wide portfolio of pharmaceutical products covering anti-infectives, central nervous system, respiratory, gastro-intestinal/metabolic, oncology, and vaccines products. It also has a Consumer Healthcare operation comprising leading oral healthcare products, nutritional drinks, and over the counter medicines. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

GSK was formed in 2000 by the merger of GlaxoWellcome (formed from the mergers of Burroughs Wellcome & Company and Glaxo Laboratories), and SmithKline Beecham (from Beecham, and SmithKline).

In 1880, Burroughs Wellcome & Company was founded in London by American pharmacists Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs. The Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories opened in 1902. In 1959 the Wellcome Company bought McDougall & Robertson Inc. to become more active in animal health. The Wellcome Company production centre was moved from New York to North Carolina in 1970 and the following year another research centre was built.

Glaxo was founded in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand in 1904. Originally Glaxo was a baby food manufacturer processing local milk into a baby food by the same name: the product was sold in the 1930s under the slogan "Glaxo builds bonny babies". Still visible on the main street of Bunnythorpe is a derelict dairy factory (factory for drying and processing cows' milk into powder) with the original Glaxo logo clearly visible, but nothing to indicate that this was the start of a major multinational company.

Glaxo became Glaxo Laboratories, and opened new units in London in 1935. Glaxo Laboratories bought two companies called Joseph Nathan and Allen & Hanburys in 1947 and 1958 respectively. After the Company bought Meyer Laboratories in 1978, it started to play an important role in the US market. In 1983 the American arm Glaxo Inc. moved to Research Triangle Park (US headquarters/research) and Zebulon (US manufacturing) in North Carolina. Burroughs Wellcome and Glaxo merged in 1995 to form GlaxoWellcome. In the same year, GlaxoWellcome opened its Medicine Research Centre in Stevenage, England. Three years later GlaxoWellcome bought Polfa Poznan Company in Poland.

In 1843, Thomas Beecham launched his Beecham's Pills laxative in England giving birth to the Beecham Group. Beechams opened its first factory in St Helens, Lancashire, England for rapid production of medicines in 1859. By the 1960s it was extensively involved in pharmaceuticals.

In 1830, John K. Smith opened its first pharmacy in Philadelphia. Subsequently, in 1891, Smith, Kline and Company merged with French, Richard and Company. It changed its name to Smith Kline & French Laboratories as it focused more on research in 1929. Years later, Smith Kline & French Laboratories opened a new laboratory in Philadelphia; it then bought Norden Laboratories, a business doing research into animal health.

Smith Kline & French Laboratories bought Recherche et Industrie Thérapeutiques (Belgium) in 1963 to order to focus on vaccines. The Company started to expand globally buying seven laboratories in Canada and the US in 1969. In 1982, it bought Allergan, a manufacturer of eye and skincare products. The Company merged with Beckman Inc. later that year and then changed its name to SmithKline Beckman.

In 1988, SmithKline Beckman bought its biggest competitor, International Clinical Laboratories, and in 1989 merged with Beecham to form SmithKline Beecham plc. The headquarters of the Company were then moved to England. To expand research & development in the US, SmithKline Beecham bought a new research center in 1995. Another new research centre at New Frontiers Science Park in Harlow, England was opened in 1997. But the main centre of focus operates in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

In 2000, Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham merged to form GlaxoSmithKline.

In 2001 it completed its purchase of New Jersey-based Block Drug.

As the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, based on net income, the company had sales of £22.7 billion and made a profit of £7.8 billion in 2007. It employs around 110,000 people worldwide, including over 40,000 in sales and marketing. Its global headquarters are GSK House in Brentford, London, United Kingdom, with its United States headquarters based in Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina and its consumer products division based in the Pittsburgh suburb of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. The research and development division has major headquarters in South East England, Philadelphia and Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina.

The company is listed on the London and New York stock exchanges. The single largest market is in the United States (approximately 45% of revenue), although the company has a presence in almost 70 countries.

In addition Glaxo has been short-listed for awards such as the Worldaware Business Award for its work to eliminate malaria in Kenya.

GlaxoSmithKline recently donated money to the British flood appeal, and was ranked first on the 2006 UK Corporate Citizenship Index for donations.

On October 8, 2007 it was announced that Dr Garnier would be succeeded as Chief Executive by Mr Andrew Witty. Mr Witty, 43, has taken up the position in May 2008 and joined the Board.

GlaxoSmithKline was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2007 by Working Mother magazine and was recognized by the International Charter for its efforts. GSK also received a perfect score of 100 percent from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's 2008 Corporate Equality Index, an annual report card of corporate America's treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) employees, customers and investors. GSK also supports employee diversity networks for groups such as ECN, PTPN, GLBT, AAA, etc.

In 2003 GSK signed a corporate integrity agreement and paid $88 million in a civil fine for overcharging Medicaid for the antidepressant Paxil, and nasal-allergy spray Flonase. Later that year GSK also ran afoul of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and was facing a demand for $7.8 billion in backdated taxes and interest, the highest in IRS history.

On August 26, 2004, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office announced it had settled legal action against GlaxoSmithKline. The settlement required GSK to post a registry which would include much more information about pretrial and clinical drug study results than what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other pharmaceutical companies had thus far been willing to make public. Attorney General Spitzer hailed the settlement as "transformational in that it will provide doctors and patients access to the clinical testing data necessary to make informed judgments." This part of the settlement was the main objective of the New York AG and Rose Firestein, who worked in the office of the AG and initially argued the case should be undertaken. As for the monetary compensation, both sides finally agreed to $2.5 million. On August 3, 2004, shortly before the settlement, Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa sent a letter to GSK, stating that he was concerned that "some drug companies" may not have provided the FDA with all the information at their disposal. His letter was spurred by statements earlier in 2008 by Dr. Andrew Mosholder, an FDA official, who had told senators at a February 2, 2004 hearing that "GlaxoSmithKline, in his opinion, was attempting to 'sugar-coat' the adverse effects of Paxil on children by 'miscoding' suicidal ideations and/or suicidal behavior." Glaxo officials never commented on whether there was any connection between Senator Grassley's letter and their decision to pursue a settlement with the New York State attorney general's lawsuit.

On 12 September 2006 GSK settled the largest tax dispute in IRS history agreeing to pay $3.1 billion. At issue in the case were Zantac and the other Glaxo Group heritage products sold from 1989–2005. The case was about an area of taxation dealing with intracompany "transfer pricing"—determining the share of profit attributable to the US subsidiaries of GSK and subject to tax by the IRS. Taxes for large multi-divisional companies are paid to revenue authorities based on the profits reported in particular tax jurisdictions, so how profits were allocated among various legacy Glaxo divisions based on the functions they performed was central to the dispute in this case.

In February 2007, the Serious Fraud Office in the UK launched an investigation into allegations of GSK being involved in the discredited oil-for-food sanctions regime in Iraq. They are accused of paying bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime.

On 22 December 2006, a US court decided in Hoorman, et al. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp that individuals who purchased Paxil(R) or Paxil CR(TM) (paroxetine) for a minor child may be eligible for benefits under a $63.8 million Proposed Settlement. The lawsuit stemmed from a consumer advocate protest against Paroxetine manufacturer GSK. Since the FDA approved paroxetine in 1992, approximately 5,000 U.S. citizens – and thousands more worldwide – have sued GSK. Most of these people feel they were not sufficiently warned in advance of the drug's side effects and addictive properties.

In January 2007, according to the Seroxat Secrets website, the national group litigation in the United Kingdom, on behalf of several hundred people who allege withdrawal reactions through their use of the drug Seroxat, against GlaxoSmithKline plc, moved a step closer to the High Court in London, with the confirmation that Public Funding had been reinstated following a decision by the Public Interest Appeal Panel. The issue at the heart of this particular action claims Seroxat has a propensity to cause a withdrawal reaction. Hugh James Solicitors have confirmed this news.

In March 2008 the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency concluded that GSK should have warned of the possible ill effects of taking Seroxat a lot sooner. GSK could not be prosecuted under the old legislation.

As of 2008, GlaxoSmithKline's prescribing information acknowledges that "serious discontinuation symptoms" may occur.

On March 27, 2007, GSK pleaded guilty in an Auckland District Court to 15 charges relating to misleading conduct brought against them under the Fair Trading Act by New Zealand's Commerce Commission. The charges related to a popular blackcurrant fruit drink Ribena which the company had led consumers to believe contained high levels of vitamin C. As part of a school science project, two 14-year-old school girls (Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo) from Pakuranga College in Auckland (New Zealand) discovered that ready-to-drink juice sold in 100ml containers contained very little vitamin C. Approaches by the two teens to the company didn't resolve the issue but after the matter was publicised on a national consumer affairs television show (Fair Go) the matter came to the attention of the Commerce Commission (a government funded 'consumer watch-dog'). The commission's testing found that ready-to-drink Ribena contained no detectable vitamin C.

The company was fined $217,000 for the 15 charges. The number of charges was reduced from 88 and covered a period from March 2002 to March 2006. GSK maintains that it did not intend to mislead consumers and that the advertising claims were based on testing procedures that have since been changed. It was ordered to run an advertising campaign to provide the facts after it admitted misleading the public about the vitamin C component in its Ribena drink. Through its lawyer, Adam Ross, the company accepted Commerce Commission allegations that claims that ready-to-drink Ribena contained 7mg of vitamin C per 100ml, or 44 per cent of the recommended daily intake, were incorrect. The company also agreed television advertising claiming the blackcurrants in Ribena had four times the vitamin C of oranges, while literally true, were likely to mislead consumers about the relative levels of vitamin C in Ribena.

In February of 2009, GSK head Andrew Witty announced that the company will reduce all drug prices to 25% Western prices in the 50 least developed countries, release intellectual property rights for substances and processes relevant to neglected disease into a patent pool to encourage new drug development, and invest 20% of profits from the least developed countries in medical infrastructure for those countries.. The decision has received mixed reactions from medical charities. Doctors Without Borders welcomed the decision, encouraging other companies to follow suit, but criticised GSK for failing to include HIV patents in their patent pool, and for not including middle-income countries in the initiative.

As of 19 January 2009.

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GlaxoSmithKline Prize

The GlaxoSmithKline Prize is awarded by the Royal Society of London "for original contributions to medical and veterinary sciences published within ten years from the date of the award". Sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, the medal is awarded with a gift of £2500. The medal was first awarded in 1980 to C. Milstein "in recognition of his pioneering the production of monoclonal antibodies from hybrid cell lines and initiating their application worldwide in many fields of biology and medicine", and has since been awarded 13 times. The medal was most recently awarded to Mark Pepys "for his excellent work as a clinical scientist who has identified specific proteins as new therapeutic targets and developed novel drugs with potential use in amyloidosis, Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease".

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GlaxoSmithKline Pakistan

GlaxoSmithKline Pakistan is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan and the it's the world's second largest company with high ranking stands for Employee Cares.

GSK Pakistan equation was formed when Beecham, Glaxo Welcome and Smith Kline, all having a big name in the pharmaceutical market and that were separate entities before, merged in 2002.

GSK International is a United Kingdom-based pharmaceutical, biological, and healthcare company. It is the world's second largest pharmaceutical company and a research-based company with a wide portfolio of pharmaceutical products covering anti-infectives, central nervous system (CNS), respiratory, gastro-intestinal/metabolic, oncology, and vaccines products. It also has a Consumer Healthcare operation comprising leading oral healthcare products, nutritional drinks, and over the counter (OTC) medicines.

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Andrew Witty

Andrew Philip Witty (born 1964, Holderness) is the Chief Executive Officer of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Witty succeeded previous CEO Dr. Jean-Pierre Garnier following his retirement in May 2008.

Witty attended Malbank School, Nantwich, then gained a BA in Economics from the University of Nottingham in the UK.

He was Chair of the Council of the University's Students Union and President of Wortley Hall Junior Common Room.

He served as a Senior Vice President of the Asia-Pacific region of Pharmaceuticals International since January 2001 and was responsible for its operations in Asia Pacific, based in Singapore.

He joined Glaxo UK in 1985. He held various positions in the UK, including Director of Pharmacy & Distribution in Glaxo Pharmaceuticals UK, Director of Business Development of Biocompatibles Limited and International Product Manager of Glaxo Holdings PLC.

He served as Managing Director of Glaxo South Africa and Area Director of South and East Africa. Witty served as a Vice President and General Manager of Marketing of Glaxo Wellcome Inc., a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline with responsibility for strategy development, marketing execution and new product positioning.

Witty served as an Economic Adviser to the Governor of Guangzhou, China from 2000 to 2002. He has been an Executive Director of GlaxoSmithKline plc since January 31, 2008.

Witty has been the Chief Executive Officer of GlaxoSmithKline plc since May 21, 2008 and also serves as a Member of its Corporate Executive Team. Witty served as the President of Pharmaceuticals Europe of GlaxoSmithKline PLC since January 2003 and also served as its Chief Executive Officer Designate since October 2007.

In February 2009 he pledged to make a major change in the way GSK pharmaceuticals are priced in an attempt to make vital drugs more affordable in countries with the lowest income. At the same time he announced that GSK would place certain patents in a pool so that they were freely available for others in the search for new drugs.

He serves as a Director of Singapore Economic Development Board. He serves on the Imperial College Commercialisation Advisory Board.

He is a Member of the INSEAD UK Council, Health Innovation Council in the UK and a Director of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research. He is a Member of the Economic Development Board Audit Committee as well as a Board Member of the Singapore Land Authority Board under the Ministry of Law from 2002 to 2003.

Witty is a noted marathon runner, having recently run in the London Marathon. He continues to reside in the UK. He is married with two children, including a son born in February 1993. He married Caroline Hall in October 1988 in Cheshire. From 1999-2003, he lived in Singapore.

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Goody's Powder

Goody's Powder is an over-the-counter pain reliever, in powder form, marketed and sold by GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. Goody's contains aspirin, caffeine, and acetaminophen, the same formula as Excedrin.

Like BC Powder, with which it is commonly confused, Goody's is sold primarily in the southern United States. For many years, the face of Goody's has been NASCAR legend Richard Petty, who appears in television commercials, billboards and print advertisements for the product.

Goody's Powder is mixed in water and ingested as a drink. The perceived benefit of delivering pain reliever in this form is that it provides faster pain relief because it does not need to be dissolved by the digestive system (as a tablet would) before entering the bloodstream. However, the very acidic taste and awkwardness of ingesting the powder are often displeasurable.

Goody's Powder was manufactured for many years by Goody's Manufacturing Company, a family-owned business founded in 1932 and based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The company also produced other medicinal products, including throat sprays and lozenges. The headache powder was introduced in 1936. Since 1995 GlaxoSmithKline has produced Goody's Powders in Memphis, Tennessee.

Goody's has a long history of sponsoring motor racing events and teams, especially NASCAR. The Daytona Busch Race was sponsored by Goody's from 1982 to 1996. Goody's is the title sponsor of the Goody's Cool Orange 500 Nextel Cup race at Martinsville Speedway and was the title sponsor of the Goody's Headache Powder 500 Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway from 1996 to 1999. Goody's was the official pain reliever of NASCAR from 1977 until 2007, when Tylenol became the new pain reliever of NASCAR.

Goody's sponsored Chad McCumbee's No. 45 Dodge at Pocono and Tony Stewart's Busch car in 2006 and 2007 and they have also sponsored David Gilliland Busch Car in 2006. Goody's will sponsor Bobby Labonte's Dodge at the fall Martinsville race. Goody's was also a sponsor for Aldo Bennedetti's car (character played by Don Simpson) in the movie Days of Thunder.

Goody's Powder underwent a nationwide product recall in December 1992 after William Williams of Morristown, Tennessee died after ingesting a packet of the powder that contained cyanide. It was later determined that the package had clear evidence of tampering and that the death probably was a suicide. Goody's Manufacturing Company, the manufacturer at the time, was not found at fault.

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