Merck vs Merck: A 'Mercky' Tale

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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Image Credit : ilusión óptica by Igor Domsac is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Merck vs Merck: A ‘Mercky’ tale