A few days ago we reviewed the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies by sales. In this post, lets take a quick look at the top 10 global biopharmaceutical firms based on 2009 revenues.
The table below lists the Top 10 Global Biopharmaceutical Companies by Sales. These firms were selected based on the following rule:
- The company is considered a biopharma if more than half of its drug revenues — not royalties — come from large-molecule drugs and vaccines.
This year Roche/Genentech has become the world’s top biopharma company. This is the first change at the top position since this list was published for the last 10 years. In March 2009, the Swiss drug company Roche agreed to buy Genentech for $46.8 Billion. This pushed Roche/Genentech to the number one spot.
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Source: Contract Pharma
Note: * CSL’s financial year ran from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009
Other than Roche/Genentech the rest of the list above is the same as last year’s. According to the report this “is both a sign of the stability among biopharmas and a sign of the difficulty in commercializing new biologics without a major partner.”
When the first list was published 10 years ago, Amgen (AMGN) was the top biopharma company with revuenues of $3.2 billion at that time. Now there are eight companies with revenues higher than that. This shows the tremendous growth and the potential for biopharmas.
Baxter BioSciences is a unit of the Illinois-based global healthcare giant Baxter(BAX) group. Merck Serono is a division of Merck KGaA of Germany. Australia-based CSL is a leader in the development and manufacture of vaccines and plasma protein biotherapies with 10,000 employees working in 27 countries.
