Merck : The Largest Pharmaceutical Organization

These ratios will help us see how effective a company is at using their sales or assets and turning this into income.

The return on shareholders’ fund, capital employed, total assets all have gone down during this period. The ability of the company to pay its short term debt hasn’t varied much, but the administrative expenses have gone up by a very large amount.

1. Blake, Hannah. “A history of Merck & Co”. Pharmaphorum. May 30, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.pharmaphorum.com/articles/a-history-of-merck-co

If a company is found to be non-guilty in a court of law, does it mean that the company made sound business decisions, or simply that they didn’t break any laws that are written in black and white? Merck, the producer of an anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, knowingly sold and continued to market the drug on a large scale even though it was found to carry substantial risks to cardiovascular health. Additionally, even after external research, product labels failed to effectively communicate the increased risk of heart attacks or cardiac death. Although Merck was not proven, in the eyes of the law, to have known the extent of harmful side effects before they pulled the drug, there are several indications that they did have enough information to discontinue the drug pending further research. The questionable decisions made by the company caused thousands of patients who were prescribed the medication to suffer heart attacks, or even die.

Merck is a drug manufacture giant who brings an annual revenue of nearly fifty billion. Prior the Vioxx recall Merck was a highly valued company when it came to its ethical standard. It had consistently toped list for companies to work for (Lawrence & Weber, 2014). In addition to this they were well recognized as a socially responsible company who placed an importance on testing to provide the best quality pharmaceuticals. The Vioxx recall caused a huge blow for the company resulting in lawsuits and drop in company value.

Ecstasy was created by Merck pharmaceutical company in 1912. Before drug form it was known as “MDMA.”In 1953 it was used by the US Army in psychological warfare tests, and then came back in the 1960s as a drug that was used to “lower inhibitions.” It wasn’t until the 1970s that it started being used as a party drug.

The pharmaceutical industry includes companies that research, develop, market or distribute generic and branded drugs. The industry expanded during the 1980’s and drugs to treat heart disease and AIDS were prominent. Consumer demand for nutritional supplements and alternative medicine increased during the 1990’s with the Internet facilitating direct purchases of drugs. Advertising for direct consumption of pharmaceutical drugs became more prominent; pharmaceutical companies were criticized for over medicating personality or social problems.

In application, people might view Merck’s duties in different ways. For example, one might argue that as a company Merck only has responsibilities to release effective and safe medications and to make a profit to stay in business. On the other hand, it could be argued that as a pharmaceutical company Merck has special obligations to follow leads (like ivermectin) because they may greatly benefit human beings or save lives despite being unprofitable.

Since its humble beginning as a small drugstore, Merck has placed a large amount of importance on improving the health and well-being of its customers. As drug patents expire and genetic forms of their top products become available, Merck’s strategy is to do the unexpected; instead of raising the price of their older products in favor of patent protected new drugs, Merck focuses on reducing their cost in order to better compete with their generic counterparts. Additionally, Merck’s plan for growth now encompasses a much more aggressive pursuit of new drugs in their pipeline through extensive research. Merck became the second largest health care company in the world after the merger with Schering-Plough in 2009 and has

The biggest change in Abbott’s balance sheet can be seen in the composition of its asset accounts. In 2006, % of the firm’s assets were current, while 69% were of the long-term variety. In 2010, however, the portion of current assets increased by 7%. This increase in current assets is most visible in cash and short-term investments (4% in 2006 to 9% in 2010) and corresponds with a higher level of uncertainty in today’s economy. The fact that Abbott Laboratories has chosen to increase the value of liquid assets on its balance sheet indicates low returns on long-term investments and a preference of keeping cash on hand rather than reinvesting in the business.

Merck was established in 1891 to improve human and animal health through the development of innovative products. Merck currently has two reportable segments, the Pharmaceutical Segment and the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Segment. Merck sells products through several channels including wholesalers, retailers, hospitals, clinics, government and managed health services providers. In the 1980’s the Merck was very successful in producing 10 major new drugs and had a very healthy pipeline. In later years, Merck has entered into joint ventures with many other pharmaceutical companies in order to expand its pipeline. In the last several years Merck has

The calculation of ratios is the calculation technique for analyzing a company’s financial performance that divides or standardize one accounting measure by another economically relevant measure. Financial ratios can be used as a tool to demonstrate financial statement users for making valid comparisons of firm operating performance, over time for the same firm and between comparable companies. External investors are mostly interested in gaining insights about a firm’s profitability, asset management, liquidity, and solvency.

Pfizer is known as one of the first and one of the world’s largest Pharmaceutical company that was establish in 1849. It was founded by two cousins called Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart in New York City. Pfizer was as a manufacturer for fine chemicals but because of the discovery that was made in 1950 which made the company the path towards becoming the research-based pharmaceutical that it is update. The product that was first produced was the palatable form of sautonin which was used to treat intestinal worm. The Headquarters of Pfizer is located in New York City, with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, which is nowadays the top multinational corporation that is sold all over the world. It is ranked as the second in the US and Japan market, and Novartis in first place and Roche in third place. The Pfizer Inc. is consisted with a trademark that is called PFIZER. Because of Pfizer’s strategies, Pfizer

Firms and Companies include ‘Ratios’ in their external report to which it can be referred as ‘highlights’. Only with the help of ratios the financial statements are meaningful. It is therefore, not surprising that ratio analysis feature are prominently in the literature on financial management. According to Mcleary (1992) ratio means “an expression of a relationship between any two figures or groups of figures in the financial statements of an undertaking”.

Merck and Co., Inc. was, in 1978, one of the biggest makers of physician endorsed sedates on the planet. Headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, Merck followed its starting points to Germany in 1668 when Friedrich Jacob Merck obtained a pharmacist in the city of Darmstadt. More than three hundred years after the fact, Merck, having turned into an American firm, utilized more than 28,000 individuals and had operations everywhere throughout the world.