GlaxoSmithKline and its Corporate Citizenship Programme

GSK’s history is based around a series of mergers and acquisitions, dating back to the opening of John K. Smith’s drug store in Philadelphia in 1830. Key dates in the firm’s history include: the building of the world’s first medicine factory by Thomas Beecham in 1859, the opening of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories in 1902 and the registration of Glaxo as a trademark for dried baby milk in 1906 (GSK, 2005i). In 2000 Smithkline Beecham (which had formed in 1989) and Glaxo Wellcome (who had merged in 1995) joined forces to create GSK — one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical companies (GSK, 2005k). The firm is headquartered in the UK with operational headquarters based in the US and operations in 118 countries. The firm has two main divisions — pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare. The pharmaceutical division (which generates about 85% of GSK’s sales) deals predominantly with vaccines and prescriptions drugs, whilst the consumer healthcare side produces over-the-counter medicines, healthcare products and nutritional drinks. Well-known products include, Zantac and Paxil/Seroxat (pharmaceuticals) and Macleans toothpaste and Lucozade (consumer healthcare).