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Teva Pharmaceuticals
Teva Pharmaceutical Limited is an Israeli multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. It primarily specializes in generic drugs, but other business interests include active pharmaceutical ingredients and, to a lesser extent, proprietary pharmaceuticals. Teva Pharmaceuticals was the largest generic drug maker, when it was narrowly overtaken by US-based Pfizer. Teva regained its market leading position after Pfizer merged with Mylan in late 2020 to close its generic drug division, forming new company Viatris. Overall, Teva is the 18th largest pharmaceutical company in the world.
Teva’s facilities are located in Israel, North America, Europe, Australia and South America. Teva shares are listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The company is a member of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
Teva’s first predecessor was SLE, Ltd., a wholesale drug business founded in 1901 in Jerusalem, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire’s Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem. SLE Ltd takes its name from the initials of its three co-founders: Chaim Solomon, Moshe Levin and Yitzhak Elstein, and uses camels to make deliveries. In the 1930s, new immigrants from Europe founded several pharmaceutical companies, including Teva (“nature” in Hebrew) and Zori. In the 1930s, Salomon, Levine and Elstein Ltd also established a pharmaceutical company, Assia.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries took its present form on May 1, 1935 through the efforts of Gunther Friedlander and his aunt Else Kober. The original registration was under the name Teva Middle East Pharmaceutical and Chemical Works Company Limited in Jerusalem, then part of Mandatory Palestine. . Friedlander was a German pharmacist, botanist and pharmacognosticist who immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1934 after the Nazi Party came to power.
The company was built with an investment of 4,900 pounds sterling, which came partly from the family’s own capital and partly from loans from other German immigrants. Due to a lack of capital, banker Alfred Feuchtwanger joined Teva as a partner, receiving a 33% stake in return for his investment. In 1951, Feuchtwanger launched an initial public offering to raise capital through the newly established Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange, and Teva became a public company.
Friedländer’s business philosophy states that the pharmaceutical industry has a reliable base in difficult economic times, since “a Jewish mother will always buy medicine for her children”. In World War II, the company supplied medicines to the Allied forces, and particularly to the British Army present in the Middle East. After the war, Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, the last of the High Commissioners for Palestine and Transjordan, visited Tewa on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. His visit enhanced Teva’s reputation in the pharmaceutical market and created momentum for Teva’s development.
During World War II and until the end of British Mandatory Palestine, Teva exported its medical products to Arab countries. In 1941, Friedlander presented Teva products at an exhibition held in Cairo, Egypt. The exhibition was sponsored by General Agent and Sole Distributor of Medicines in Egypt and Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. Later, Teva exported its products to health institutions in the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR), Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Persia, and Burma.
In 1954, Teva received a Certificate of Excellence in Training Award from the President of Israel, Yitzhak Ben Zavi. In 1964, Teva partnered with Syntex and Schering Plough, a company from Mexico.
