Sanofi-Aventis

From ArticleWorld

Formation of Sanofi-Aventis

The merger of two pharmaceutical giants –Sanofi-Sythelabo and Aventis, formed Sanofi-Aventis in the year 2004. The French government was in favour of local company taking part in the merger, instead of Novartis, a Swiss company, which was in the race too.

Sanofi-Synthelabo was formed in 1999 when Sanofi merged with Synthelabo, based at Paris, France. In 1999, Aventis was a formation by event of a merger, too. Rhone-Poulenc S.A. merged with Hoechst Marion Russell which in turn, formed a merger with Roussel & Marion Merrill Dow, the merged company was based in Strasbourg, France.

The works

Sanofi-Aventis has operations in the field of research and development, manufacturing, and marketing of products, medicines, basically, prescription market. It covers seven areas of specialization- cardiovascular, thrombosis, oncology, diabetes, central nervous system, internal medicines, and vaccines.

Sanofi-Aventis has operations in more than a hundred countries covering the five continents and having a high workforce of about 97000 employees worldwide. Four billion Euros was spent on Research and Development alone. The sales figure for the year 2003 was a staggering 25 billion Euros.

Aventis Prize

One of the world’s most prestigious non-fiction literary prizes for books on science, the “Aventis Prize” for Science Books is instituted to bring out the very best in popular science writing for adults and children. The Aventis prizes are managed by the Royal Society, U.K., the U.K. National academy of Science and the Aventis foundation.