It doesn’t help that the company, which calls
itself Merck in the United States isn’t allowed to do so in other parts of the
world, because the other Merck is called Merck. Confused? Well you
wouldn’t be the only one!
Merck is the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company, which has done business for almost 350 years. Since almost everybody in a chemistry lab has used a Merck product at some point of time, and now that Sigma Aldrich also belongs to Merck, we thought it would be worthwhile to create a simple comparison chart to better understand the two companies:
Merck & Co., Inc.
Merck KGaA
Website
www.merck.com
www.merckgroup.com
Logo
Headquarter
Kenilworth, New Jersey, United States
Darmstadt, Germany
Founded
1891, by George Merck, as an American
subsidiary of German Merck
1668, by Friedrich Jacob Merck
The Split
Owing to World War I, Merck &
Co. was expropriated by the U.S. government in 1917
Name in the US and Canada
Merck
EMD Millipore
(Emanuel Merck Darmstadt)
Name in the rest of the World
MSD,
Merck Sharp & Dohme or
MSD
Sharp & Dohme
Merck
Total Sales (2014)
$42 Billion
€11.5 Billion
Employees
70,000
39,000
Merger & Acquisitions
Sharp & Dohme, Inc.
Schering-Plough
Idenix Pharmaceuticals
Cubist Pharmaceuticals
OncoEthix
Medco Containment Services Inc.
Millipore Corporation
Serono SA
Sigma-Aldrich
AZ Electronic Materials SA
Major Products
Januvia®, Janumet®, Zetia®, Vytorin®, Gardasil®, Remicade®
Rebif®, Erbitux®, Gonal-f®, Concor®, Glucophage®, Euthyrox®
Recent facts of Confusion:
2011 German Merck KGaA used to have Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/merck, but one day found U.S. Merck & Co. there instead. As Merck KGaA had an agreement with Facebook, the matter reached the courts
. Eventually Facebook admitted their mistake and let the German
Merck resume its place at www.facebook.com/merck.
U.S. Merck & Co. now sits at http://www.facebook.com/MerckBeWell.
2014 Protestors from the
group STOPAIDS (a network working
on how to secure an effective global response to HIV and AIDS) reached the offices of Merck KGaA in London, when protesting Merck’s “campaign to delay South Africa’s proposal to allow low-cost copies of patented drugs.”
The only problem: the protestors were targeting U.S. based Merck & Co instead of German Merck…
2014 Bloomberg headline “Bayer to Buy Merck Consumer-Health Unit for $14.2 Billion” resulted in Merck KGaA issuing a same day clarification “Merck to Keep Consumer Health Business” since the Bloomberg article was referring to the U.S. Merck & Co!
2015 Even Merck KGaA CEO Karl-Ludwig Kley admits that his company bears some fault in allowing the situation to get to this point: “over many decades we underinvested in our brand,” he told the Financial
Times: “we need to make people more aware of the fact there are two Mercks.”
RadioCompass just thought it was
worth helping Mr Kley out with this complilation!
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