Astra AB was founded in 1913 in Södertälje, Sweden by the initiative of more than 400 doctors and apothecaries who joined together to establish the company and to become its first shareholders.
Two products—Digitotal, a heart medication, and Glukofos, a nutritional supplement—emerged from Astra’s facilities in 1914, and the company began to prosper.
When the apothecary Hjalmar Andersson Tesch joined Astra in 1915 as the company's new president he brought with him a number of his own pharmaceuticals.
It was under the long-serving CEO, Borje Gabrielsson, who led the company between 1927 and 1957, that Astra AB established its status as a leading Swedish pharmaceutical company. The new hierarchy reorganized many of Astra’s operations.
Astra introduced two important product families onto the Swedish market in 1948: penicillin and anesthetics, initially in the form of Xylocaine.
British Zeneca Group PLC
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) / Zeneca was founded in 1926 in the United Kingdom. Zeneca was part of Imperial Chemical Industries prior to a demerger in 1993. British multinational pharma company Zeneca was formed by a demerger of the pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals businesses of Imperial Chemical Industries.
Zeneca Ltd. was established as a 100 percent wholly owned subsidiary of ICI on January 1, 1993. By June of the same year, however, Zeneca existed as a totally separate company from ICI. Zeneca's market capitalization was actually more than that of ICI.
In 1999 Astra and Zeneca Group merged to form AstraZeneca plc, with its headquarters in London while its R&D headquarters were to be in Sweden.
Company markets its product to over 100 countries, employs over 65,000 people worldwide. AstraZeneca spends over US$ 3.4 billion a year on R&D activities including Discovery Research.
Today, AstraZeneca plc is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies with healthcare sales of $27.97 billion.
AstraZeneca PLC - British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company
