Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, American biopharmaceutical company resulting from a merger in 1989 and dating to companies founded in 1858 and 1887. It produces pharmaceuticals, vitamins, medical devices, and beauty and personal-care products. Headquarters are in New York City.

The original firm, Clinton Pharmaceutical Co., was founded in Clinton, N.Y., in 1887 by William McLaren Bristol, Sr., and John R. Myers. It was incorporated as Bristol-Myers Company in 1900 and by then had moved from Clinton to Syracuse and then to Brooklyn. The company first made drugs for physicians, but after World War I it concentrated on the laxative Sal Hepatica and other over-the-counter proprietary drugs and entered the field of toiletries, notably with Ipana toothpaste. In 1929 Bristol-Myers was absorbed by a giant holding company, Drug Inc., which, however, dissolved during the Great Depression. Bristol-Myers became a publicly traded company in 1933.

In 1943 the company returned to its former emphasis on prescription drugs and diversified over the years by buying up a number of other companies, including a hair-care and cosmetics firm in 1959, a household-products manufacturer in 1965, and an infant-formula and nutrition company in 1967. In 1989 the merger of Bristol-Myers Company and Squibb Corporation—the descendant of a company founded by E.R. Squibb in 1858—created one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

In 1998 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the company permission to market Excedrin Migraine, the first migraine headache pain medication available to consumers without a prescription. Following its sale of the hair-products company Clairol to Procter & Gamble Co., Bristol-Myers acquired the DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company from the DuPont Company in 2001.

In 2004 Bristol-Myers agreed to pay a $150 million fine to settle charges of accounting fraud by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), though it neither admitted nor denied guilt. In 2006 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began investigating the company on charges of collusion and deceiving U.S. antitrust authorities about an agreement to delay the marketing of a generic version of its blood-thinning drug Plavix. Three years later Bristol-Myers paid a $2.1 million penalty fine to settle the charges.

In addition to over-the-counter products such as Excedrin analgesics and Enfamil infant formulas, Bristol-Myers Squibb both manufactures and distributes prescription medications for the treatment of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and hypertension.