An Overview of Pharmacia & Upjohn  

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In August 1995, Upjohn announced a merger with Pharmacia. John Zabriskie from Upjohn was named CEO of the combined company, called Pharmacia & Upjohn (P&U or PNU). Jan Ekberg of Pharmacia was named the Chairman. The merger was finalized in October 1995.

Pharmacia had major centers in Sweden and in Italy. It had strong European sales whereas Upjohn has strong U.S. sales. Zabriskie’s plan was to have three major operational centers, Kalamazoo in the US, Stockholm/Uppsala in Sweden and Milan in Italy. These would compete against each other. The corporate headquarters would be in London.

P&U purchased an expensive piece of land on the bank of the River Thames west of London, and built a headquarters there. It cost $1.2 billion to set up this new corporation. As can be see in early corporate literature, the goal was to aspire all employees to be creative and sucessful.

Alas, the aspiration and competition model was not successful. There was too much duplication, and it did not lead to any lucrative drug breakthroughs or efficiencies.

In 1997, Fred Hassan, a Pakistani-born businessman, was brought on board as CEO of Pharmacia & Upjohn, replacing John Zabriskie. His office was initially in Portage Building 88, the old 1961 Upjohn headquarters building. Hassan had made a career as a turnaround specialist and P&U needed that. Hassan made many swift changes, including moving the headquarters from the UK to New Jersey. 

There were thousands of layoffs as Hassan cut the corporation to the bone. Another $1.2 billion was spent for this restructuring. P&U acquired the cancer company Sugen in 1999 for $650 million, which subsequently yielded Sutent, a billion-dollar product.

In December 1999, P&U announced a merger with Monsanto, although it was really P&U purchasing Monsanto. The new company was named Pharmacia. The only goal of this acquisition was to get the Searle pharmaceutical operation, which had the lucrative COX-2 pipeline. It was finalized in April 2000.

Pharmacia & Upjohn lasted for five years. The first two years were a brave attempt to aspire all its employees to greater things. Unfortunately, that did not succeed. The final three years were about cost-cutting and setting up the company to be a future acquisition target.

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