Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States. The company was founded in 1876 by a pharmaceutical chemist, Eli Lilly, after whom the company was ultimately named.
Among other specialties, Lilly was the first company to mass-produce penicillin and today is the world's largest manufacturer and distributor of psychiatric medications. In January 2009, the largest criminal fine in U.S. history was imposed on Lilly for illegal marketing of its best-selling product, the atypical antipsychotic medication, Zyprexa.
Company profile
A Fortune 500 corporation, Eli Lilly had revenues of $20 billion in 2008, making it the 148th largest company in the United States and the 10th largest corporation by global pharmaceutical sales. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and is a member of the S&P 500 stock index. Eli Lilly was one of the Nifty Fifty stocks that propelled the mid 20th century bull market.
Eli Lilly is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
History
See also: Eli LillyColonel Eli Lilly, a pharmacist and a veteran of the American Civil War, began formulating plans to create a medical wholesale company while working in partnership at a drug store named Binford & Lilly. His wife's death from malaria a few years earlier influenced him to see a need for quality and effective drugs to be made available on a large scale. In 1873, Lilly returned to his hometown of Indianapolis and opened a store with a partner to begin working towards his goal, Johnson & Lilly. He slowly saved up enough money to open a store of his own.
Lilly’s Indianapolis store started in 1876 with only three employees, including his 14-year-old son Josiah, and $1,400 in working capital. His first innovation was gelatin-coating for pills and capsules. Following on his experience of low-quality medicines used in the Civil War, Lilly committed himself to producing only high-quality prescription drugs, in contrast to the common and often ineffective patent medicines of the day. His products, which worked as advertised and gained a reputation for quality, began to become popular in the city. In his first year of business, sales reached $4,470 and by 1879, they had grown to $48,000. He hired his brother, James, to take over sales in 1878. Other family members were also employed by the growing company, his cousin Evan Lilly was hired as a bookkeeper; his grandsons Eli and Josiah were hired to run errands and other odd jobs. In 1881 he formally incorporated the company, naming it Eli Lilly and Company. By the late 1880s he was one of the area's leading businessmen with over one-hundred employees and $200,000 in annual sales.
Eli Lilly and company was the first pharmaceutical company of its kind. At first Lilly was the company’s only researcher, but as his business grew, he created a laboratory and employed a department dedicated to creating new drugs. He hired his first scientist dedicated to research in 1886. Their methods of research were based on Lilly's. He also insisted on quality assurance, and instituted mechanisms to ensure that the drugs being produced worked as advertised, had the correct combination of ingredients, and that only the correct dosage of medicines was contained in each pill. He was aware of the addictive and dangerous nature of some of his drugs, and also pioneered the concept of only giving such drugs to people who had first seen a physician to determine if they needed the medicine.
Among the company's innovations was fruit flavoring for medicines and sugarcoated pills making their medicines easier to take. His growing business led him to purchase additional facilities for research and production. He began to purchase a complex of buildings on McCarty Street in south Indianapolis, other businesses followed and the area began to develop into a major business area of the city. In 1890 he turned over his business to his son Josiah, who ran the company for the several decades. He focused his own free time on growing number of the civic organizations he was involved in, including the Charity Organization Society, the forerunner of the United Way. The 1890s were a tumultuous decade economically, but the company was able to survive and came out stronger than ever. In 1894 the company purchased a plant to be used solely for creating capsule. Several technological advances were achieved by the company, and the creation was automated. Over the next few years the company began to create tens of millions of capsules and pills annually.
When Eli Lilly died in 1898, his son Josiah K. Lilly, Sr. inherited the company. Josiah also continued his father's civic mindedness and ordered the company to send much needed medicine to support recovery efforts following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Josiah oversaw a large expansion of the company and advocated government regulation of medicines, leading to the passages of the Pure Food and Drug Law in 1906. In 1919, Josiah Lilly hired biochemist George Henry Alexander Clowes as director of biochemical research. Clowes' negotiations with researchers who developed insulin at the University of Toronto helped launch the first successful large-scale production of insulin in 1923. The success of insulin enabled the company to attract well-respected scientists and, with them, make more medical advances. Like his father, Josiah retired from the business and turned it over to his oldest son so he could take a more active role in philanthropy.
Eli Lilly, the grandson of Col. Lilly, was named as the company's president in 1932 to succeed his father. In 1934, he led the company to make its first venture overseas when a Lilly office was opened in England. World War II brought production at Lilly to a new high with the manufacturing of Merthiolate and blood plasma. In 1943, the company began full-scale production of penicillin, the first company to mass produce the new medicine.
Eli Lilly International Corp. was formed in 1943 as a subsidiary to encourage business trade abroad. In 1945, the company opened a new plant on South Kentucky Avenue in Indianapolis and, by 1948, Lilly employed nearly 7,000 people. The same year, Eli Lilly relinquished the presidency to his brother, Josiah K. Lilly, Jr. In 1952, Josiah, Jr. took the company public; the first public shares of stock were offered and, in 1953, Eugene N. Beesley was named the company's new president. He was the first non-family member to run the company.
Lilly continued to expand. In 1950, Tippecanoe Laboratories, in Lafayette, Indiana, increased antibiotic production with its patent on erythromycin. In 1954, Elanco Products Co. was formed for the production of veterinary pharmaceuticals. In 1963, with an acquisition from Distillers Company, the company established a major factory in Liverpool. In 1968, Lilly Research Centre Ltd. near London, England was built. It was the company's first research facility outside the United States. In 1969, the company opened a new plant in Clinton, Indiana.
Lilly made an uncharacteristic, but ultimately profitable, move in 1971 when it bought cosmetic manufacturer Elizabeth Arden for $38 million. Sixteen years later, Lilly sold Arden to Fabergé in 1987 for $657 million.
Richard Wood was named CEO of Lilly in 1973. During the 1970s and 1980s, Eli Lilly and Company saw a flurry of drug production: antibiotic Keflex in 1971; heart drug Dobutrex in 1977; Ceclor, which would become the world's top selling oral antibiotic, in 1979; leukemia drug Eldisine; antiarthritic Oraflex; and analgesic Darvon.
Lilly ventured into medical instruments through the acquisition of IVAC Corp., which manufactures vital signs and intravenous fluid infusion monitoring systems. Lilly also purchased Cardiac Pacemaker, a manufacturer of heart pacemakers.
In 1989, a joint agri-chemical venture between Elanco Products Co. and Dow Chemical created DowElanco. In 1997, Lilly sold its 40 percent share in the company to Dow Chemical for $1.6 billion and the name was changed to Dow AgroSciences
In 1991, Vaughn Bryson was named CEO of Eli Lilly. During his 18-month tenure, the company reported its first quarterly loss ever. Randall L. Tobias, former vice-chairman of AT&T, was named Bryson's replacement in 1993. He was the first official recruited from outside of the company. Sidney Taurel, former chief operating officer of Lilly was named CEO in 1998, replacing Tobias. Taurel was named chairman in January 1999.
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