Bristol-Myers Squibb

Towards the end of the 19th century, In the small upstate New York town of Clinton, the eponymous Clinton Pharmaceutical Company (CPC) had been sinking deeper and deeper into the red. In 1887, after not having shown a profit for years, CPC was purchased for $5,000 by William McLaren Bristol and John Ripley Myers. The company attained its official incorporation on December 13, 1887, with Bristol serving as president while Myers assumed the post of vice president. The company continued to struggle financially, but its new owners were determined to achieve profitability by producing top quality products while maintaining the company's financial stability.

In May of 1898, the drug manufacturer was renamed Bristol-Myers Company (BMC), a firm that had yet to turn a profit. A year later, with the company still losing money, John Myers died, and it wasn't until 1900 that BMC finally made it into the black. BMC achieved national recognition through its development and distribution of Sal Hepatica, a laxative-based, mineral salts elixir that became enormously popular in the U.S. between the years 1903-1905. During the same period, BMC attained equal success through its iconic Ipana toothpaste-the first product of its kind to contain a disinfectant that worked to forestall the onset of periodontal disease.

In 1989, nearly 90 years after celebrating its first profit, Bristol-Myers merged with the drug manufacturer E.R. Squibb, creating what was then the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Now typically referred to as BMS (traded as BMY on the NYSE), the drug manufacturer is also the parent company of Mead Johnson, one of the world's leading suppliers of wound care products, vitamins, supplements, and the well known baby formula Enfamil.

Over the years, BMS has become a well-known and respected pharmaceutical company; BMS worked closely with the National Cancer Institute on the development of the highly effective cancer fighting drug Paclitaxel while achieving similar successes with drugs that worked to combat HIV and other diseases. BMS also sells the widely used chemotherapy agent cisplatin under the trade name Platinol. Cisplatin is used in combination with Alimta for treatment of mesothelioma. Unfortunately, BMS became infamous in the pharmaceutical industry during the Early 2000s because of the firm's corporate and drug development misbehaviors that resulted in over $1 billion in fines, as well as the court-ordered imposition of federal oversight of the company for a two year period.

Headquartered on Manhattan's Park Avenue, in 2008, BMS was listed as # 125 of the Fortune 500 companies. Today, BMS is perhaps best known for a recent marketing campaign that featured the world famous cyclist Lance Armstrong, a testicular cancer survivor who relied on chemotherapies that had been developed by BMS.

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