AmerisourceBergen Corporation

Company information

• Date founded: 2001
• Industry: Drugs and Biotechnology
• Corporate headquarters: Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania
• Type: Public

Overview

AmerisourceBergen Corporation is a drug wholesaling company based in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania. Its roots may be traced through numerous druggists and entrepreneurs back to 1871, and some of its most important developmental steps occurred in 1947 and 1969, but the company in its modern form and name began in 2001. That year, existing pharmaceutical companies Bergen Brunswig and AmeriSource merged to form AmerisourceBergen. Prior businesses added to the conglomerate over its long development include Wheelock-Finlay, the Brunswig Drug Company, Bergen Drug Company (founded 1947), The Drug House, and Alco Standard Corporation.

Although it focuses mainly on drug distribution, AmerisourceBergen has many offerings and activities, ranging from business consulting to patient service. The company works with a wide range of medical facilities, including drug stores, hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, and mail-order pharmacies. AmerisourceBergen produces and distributes name-brand and generic healthcare products, prescription and over-the-counter medications, health-related supplies and equipment, and a variety of services. It was involved in the distribution of a drug meant to treat victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

AmerisourceBergen distributes medical and healthcare products and services throughout the United States and internationally. According to the company website, as of 2022, AmerisourceBergen serves 10.5 million healthcare patients each year. It ships 4 million healthcare products daily to customers in the United States and sends 16.7 million parcels annually to customers in more than 75 other countries. Much of this distribution takes place under the World Courier company, which AmerisourceBergen acquired in 2012.

In 2015, AmerisourceBergen acquired MWI Veterinary Supply, a major supplier of products and services relating to animals, including agricultural and companion animals. Since that time, the company has dedicated a significant segment of its business to animal health care. According to the company website, AmerisourceBergen leaders believe that human health is closely linked to animal health since animals of various types provide companionship and nourishment to humans. As of 2022, AmerisourceBergen was a leading supplier to livestock producers, agricultural retailers, manufacturers of animal products, and veterinarians in the United States and beyond.

According to Forbes, as of 2022, AmerisourceBergen had 17,160 employees in its various operations centered in its Pennsylvania headquarters. The company had over 44,000 total employees. Under chief executive officer Steven H. Collins, the company had $194.5 billion in sales. By 2022, AmerisourceBergen’s profits totaled over $1.6 billion. The company ranked in the top fifteen global companies for sales in 2021. A large amount of this success is due to the company’s ongoing push for new expansion and technologies. Accordingly, Forbes ranked the company as the nineteenth most innovative in the world in 2018. That year, it also ranked #130 on the list of America’s largest public companies and #444 on the list of the world’s best employers. In 2023, AmerisourceBergen ranked #88 on the Forbes list of best employers for diversity. Though AmerisourceBergen experienced a small number of layoffs in its Pennsylvania office in 2023, market experts indicated this had little to do with the company’s financial performance or outlook.

History

Over many generations, AmerisourceBergen developed from a variety of businesses that combined through purchases and alliances. The earliest roots of AmerisourceBergen can be traced back to 1871. That year, Lucien Napoleon Brunswig accepted an apprenticeship, which was a form of education based on observation and on-the-job training, with an American druggist. About eleven years later, Brunswig, having already mastered the trade, formed a business partnership with an existing drug company called Wheelock-Finlay. In 1887, after the death of Finlay, Brunswig brought another druggist, F. W. Braun, into the partnership.

After twenty years, Brunswig purchased ownership of the company from his other partners. Subsequently, he rechristened the business with his own surname: The Brunswig Drug Company. In line with its new leadership, the company took a new headquarters as well, establishing itself in the city of Vernon, California. There, the business flourished for years, gaining significant influence and strong profits during World War I (1914–1918) and the ongoing growth of the American West and Pacific Coast.

Meanwhile, as Brunswig grew, a druggist and entrepreneur named Emil P. Martini opened his own pharmaceutical retail outlet in 1928 in Hackensack, New Jersey. After almost two decades of work and learning, in 1947, Martini converted this business into the Bergen Drug Company. The Bergen Drug Co. was based on old ideals but moved quickly into the ever-changing modernized marketplace. Most notably, it embraced the rising use of computerized technology for drug retailing.

Brunswig had adopted very basic computers as early as 1947 to record inventory information on easily processed punch cards. Within ten years, the Cold War and the Space Race were pushing science to its limits and beyond, and computer technology was at the forefront. Bergen embraced computers on a large scale starting in the late 1950s. Initially, for inventory tracking purposes, computers quickly found important roles in accounting and many other areas of the business.

The path of growth and innovation proved successful for Bergen, which rose into the top ranks of American drug distribution. In the 1960s, about five thousand medical practitioners and facilities relied on Bergen to supply their stock. In 1969, Bergen Drug Company had grown large enough to not only rival the long-established Brunswig Drug Company but also to acquire it. The resulting drug distribution conglomerate was renamed the Bergen Brunswig Corporation.

Using the companies’ shared experience and resources, the new merged unit continued to grow, adopt newly technologies, and offer new services into the coming decades. For example, by the early 1970s, Bergen Brunswig was using computer technology to send information about purchases to their distribution facilities, greatly reducing the amount of time between order placement and delivery. In 1978, they promoted a plan called the Good Neighbor Pharmacy initiative, which was meant to increase and improve small-town pharmacy businesses.

Another strand of what would become AmerisourceBergen took shape in the form of Alco Standard Corporation. With its buyout of The Drug House company in 1977, Alco became a major player in American drug wholesaling. In the coming few years, Alco Standard Corporation continued to expand rapidly, merging with or acquiring many other companies. A greatly expanded Alco took a new title, AmeriSource Health Corporation, in 1994.

Bergen Brunswig continued to grow parallel to AmeriSource. In 2001, leaders from both companies reached an agreement to combine, much as Bergen and Brunswig had in 1969. This new drug-distribution superpower combined its former company names to form AmerisourceBergen. With its combined strengths and resources, AmerisourceBergen became one of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the company continued to grow as well as to increase its specialties and influence in the Canadian marketplace. Canada was just the first step, however. In 2012, the acquisition of World Courier allowed AmerisourceBergen to distribute pharmaceutical products more quickly throughout the United States and to more than fifty other countries. AmerisourceBergen also cemented its presence domestically by partnering with the drug retailer Walgreens, which allowed AmerisourceBergen to oversee the distribution of its products in its stores.

Impact

According to the AmerisourceBergen website, the company views itself as a promoter of improved health and well-being for people and animals in the United States and around the world. The company also promotes environmentally sustainable measures to protect the health of the planet. For example, the company oversaw the recycling of 36.5 million pounds of material in one year and donated 1.25 million resources to help people safely dispose of expired or unwanted medicine.

AmerisourceBergen was involved in the early preparation and distribution of a drug produced by Gilead Sciences meant to treat the COVID-19 illness in 2020. The drug, scientifically called remdesivir but branded as Veklury, won the approval of the US Department of Health and Human Services, with AmerisourceBergen acting as the domestic distributor. According to a Gilead press release dated June 21, 2021, large-scale studies supported the use of Veklury for the treatment of COVID-19. These studies showed that patients who received treatment with the drug had a significantly smaller risk of death than patients who did not receive the drug. Remdesivir received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2022.

AmerisourceBergen has seen its share of controversy as well. In the last half of the 2010s, allegations arose that AmerisourceBergen sources were sending unusually and unacceptably high amounts of pain medication into states affected by the opioid epidemic. In 2019, Michigan authorities sued AmerisourceBergen, among other drug companies, for their contribution to that state’s problem with opioid addiction. Similar legal challenges have arisen in forty-five states and several territories, for which the defendants offered about $26 billion in settlements in 2022.

Bibliography

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