The story
Organon was founded in 1923 as a partnership between Professor Ernst Laqueur, a physiologist/endocrinologist of the University of Amsterdam, and Saal van Zwanenberg who owned a slaughterhouse, Zwanenbergs Slachterije en Fabrieken, in Oss in Northern Brabant. The company's first product was insulin in 1923. In the 1930s it manufactured estrogens, in particular estrone under the trade name Menformon.
In 1948, Organon acquired the Newhouse research site in Scotland, United Kingdom. The production of cortisone was initiated in 1953.
In 1962, the company bought the stock of the Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek, and the company name was changed to Koninklijke Zwanenberg-Organon (KZO). It merged with the fibre producer AKU in 1969 to become AKZO, later Akzo Nobel. Organon was the human health care business unit of Akzo Nobel. In 2004, Organon acquired active-pharmaceutical-ingredient producer Diosynth.
Organon was initially located in West Orange, New Jersey. In November 2007, Schering-Plough acquired Organon BioSciences and the veterinary pharmaceutical company Intervet from Akzo Nobel. Schering-Plough transferred Organon to its headquarters in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two years later, Schering-Plough merged with Merck & Co., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada.
In May 2020, Merck & Co. announced that Organon & Co. would be the name of "the pending spin-off of its women’s health, legacy products, and biosimilars businesses, which the company says is on track to be completed by the end of the first half in 2021." Merck completed the spinoff and Organon & Co. became a publicly traded company on June 3, 2021. A copy of the Information Statement sent to Merck shareholders was filed with the U.S. SEC on April 20, 2021, in a Form 10-12B/A, Exhibit 99.1
In November 2021, the business announced it would acquire Forendo Pharma and its lead compound, a potentially first-in-class oral 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 inhibitor.
In April 2026, India based Sun Pharma acquired Organon & Co. at $11.75 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Organon & Co., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7