Schering AG

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Schering Aktiengesellschaft

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1871
resolution December 29, 2006
Reason for dissolution Takeover by Bayer AG
Seat Berlin , Germany
management
  • Arthur Higgins, chairman of the board
Number of employees 25,037 (2005)
sales EUR 5.308 billion (2005)
Branch pharmacy

The Schering Aktiengesellschaft is one of the predecessor companies of Bayer Pharma . Until the takeover by Bayer in 2006, Schering was an independent, listed pharmaceutical company with more than 25,000 employees in 160 subsidiaries worldwide and sales of around 5.3 billion euros (2005). The head office was in Berlin-Wedding . The largest German production sites were in Bergkamen , Berlin and Weimar (Schering production company).

The work of the former Schering AG focused on the following four business areas with drugs :

history

Early years

In 1851 the pharmacist Ernst Schering opened the green pharmacy in Berlin's Chausseestrasse . This resulted in the chemical factory on Actien (formerly E. Schering) .

The company grew rapidly in the following years, in 1913 it employed 935 workers, 112 foremen and 180 employees. In addition to the Berlin location, there were two plants in Russia (in Moscow and Wydriza ) with over 1,000 workers and a plant in Great Britain . The turnover of about 10 million marks arose with photo chemicals and pharmaceuticals . Important products were salicylic acid , the gout drug atophan and various sleeping pills and disinfectants. In 1893, Schering brought formalin (an aqueous solution of formaldehyde ) onto the market.

In the early 1920s, Schering took over the W. Spindler company in the Berlin district of Köpenick . In 1922, the management of Oberschlesische Kokswerke und Chemische Fabriken AG acquired the majority of shares in Chemische Fabrik auf Actien (formerly E. Schering) . Schering thus became part of a group consisting of several areas and merged in 1927 with the Berlin-Adlershof- based company CAF Kahlbaum to form Schering-Kahlbaum AG . By 1929 she built a new production facility in Berlin-Grünau , Cöpenicker Strasse, on a former storage area of ​​the Kahlbaum chemical factory . A residential building was also built for senior executives. In 1937 the Kokswerke und Chemische Fabriken AG and its subsidiary Schering-Kahlbaum AG merged and traded under the name Schering Aktiengesellschaft because of the internationally respected name Schering .

Schering AG share of RM 1000 in July 1938

At the same time, the shareholders introduced a voting right restriction for major shareholders to protect against hostile takeovers , which lasted until 1998. The pharmaceutical business, thus becoming part of a mining and chemical company, further yet X-ray supplies and pesticides produced.

In 1938 the Scherk company and the Scherk house in Berlin were sold to Schering AG as part of the " Aryanization " process. In July 1942, a camp for foreign forced laborers was set up on the factory premises. In 1951 the factory building was repaired after being destroyed in the war.

Consequences of the Second World War

In 1941 the US government expropriated the local Schering branch and transferred it to state property. After the Second World War , in 1952, the company was privatized under the name Schering-Plow . The German Schering AG thus lost the rights to its own name in North America and has been trading as Berlex in the USA since 1971 .

A bomb attack on Berlin destroyed the Schering headquarters in Berlin-Wedding on November 23, 1943. The archive was also lost. In May 1945, the Charlottenburg-Nord and Wedding plants were completely dismantled as a reparation payment . The parts of the company in East and Central Germany were expropriated and nationalized.

Booth of the drug factory Schering AG Berlin at the autumn fair 1948 in Leipzig

Before the split, Schering appeared once again with new products at the Leipzig autumn fair (see photo). The plants in Adlershof and Grünau were named Berlin-Chemie in 1949 and soon appeared on the market as VEB Berlin-Chemie. In 1949 the remaining works achieved only 15.4 million of the previous 34 million Reichsmark turnover. After German reunification , the former factories in East Berlin and East Germany did not return to Schering's ownership.

Acquisition 2006

In March 2006, the German pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA started an attempt to take over Schering. The Schering Board of Management rejected this request as "undesirable and inadequate".

The Bayer AG participated as a white knight on takeover battle, offering shareholders 86  euros per share. This value was 39 percent above the price prior to the announcement of the hostile takeover offer by Merck KGaA. Schering welcomed this project and supported Bayer. At the same time, Merck shares had acquired Schering's shares up to a volume of around 21 percent. With a 25 percent stake, a blocking minority would have been reached, with which Merck could have made the takeover by Bayer more difficult. Shortly before the end of the first bidding period for the takeover, the Merck management gave in and transferred the acquired Schering shares to Bayer for EUR 89 per share. At the general meeting of Schering on January 17, 2007, the shareholders decided to force the last available shareholders out of the company by means of a compulsory settlement and to take the shares off the stock exchange. This was made possible because Bayer held more than 95 percent of the shares at the time.

Schering was valued at a market value of around EUR 13 billion prior to the takeover offer by Merck, while Bayer's initial offer valued Schering at a total of EUR 16.5 billion. The increase to 89 euros per share resulted in a capital value of around 17 billion euros. Before the takeover, the largest shareholder was the insurance group Allianz , which last held 10.85 percent of the Schering papers. The rest of the shares were in free float .

In September 2006 Arthur J. Higgins succeeded Hubertus Erlen as Chairman of the Board of Management.

The merger with the pharmaceuticals business of Bayer AG resulted in the new Bayer Schering Pharma AG on December 29, 2006 as a subsidiary of Bayer HealthCare . In November 2010 Bayer decided to strengthen the umbrella brand; as a result, Bayer Schering Pharma AG only operates under Bayer HealthCare . On July 1, 2011, the company name "Schering" was given up and the company was renamed Bayer Pharma AG.

See also: Chronology of the takeover by Bayer
Memorial plaque Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering in Berlin-Wedding

Bayer AG continues to operate the Scheringianum on the Wedding site. The company history of Schering AG is presented there.

archive

The history of the company is indexed and stored in the Schering Archive, a branch of the Corporate History & Archives of Bayer AG. The archive documents offer an insight into the company's history from the beginnings with the Green Pharmacy, founded by Ernst Schering in 1851, through the Chemische Fabrik auf Actien (formerly E. Schering), Schering-Kahlbaum AG and Schering AG (incl Subsidiaries and holdings such as Alpine, Borsig-Kokswerke, Concordia , Diamalt , Nibag, Oberschlesische Kokswerke and Chemische Fabriken, Pfeilring, REWO, Voigtländer, etc.) until the takeover by Bayer AG in 2006. The archives include files as well as plans, photos, films and Exhibits.

Duogynon scandal

Schering sold drugs for the treatment of menstrual disorders and as pregnancy tests until 1973 in Germany under the brand name Duogynon and until 1980 under the name Cumorit . Duogynon, taken in early pregnancy, was associated with an increase in malformed children as early as the 1970s. There are said to have been 1000 cases in Germany alone. In 2010, an allegedly injured party filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer Schering for access to files with broad media interest, which was dismissed on January 11, 2011 due to the statute of limitations. The plaintiff also failed with a liability suit filed against Schering on behalf of hundreds of those affected in November 2011. The lawsuit was also dismissed due to the statute of limitations.

In August 2012, the plaintiff accused the Berlin district court of failing to investigate indications of an alleged influence on research results by employees of the Schering Group. A former Schering employee is said to have admitted to the plaintiff that he bribed scientists at the beginning of the 1980s so that they could present Duogynon positively in a brochure. There would be payments of 100,000 marks in the room. At that time, the risk of malformations had been known for over a decade and corresponding preparations from competing companies had long since been taken off the market.

The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices and the Paul Ehrlich Institute made it clear in the bulletin on drug safety in December 2012 that the studies published to date on Duogynon and other estrogen- progestin preparations do not provide any indication of specific teratogenic effects in pregnancy. A teratogenic or embryotoxic effect of Duogynon, for whatever purpose, is judged to be unlikely in the report.

On the other hand, however, documents have emerged that show that employees at Schering's English headquarters warned their colleagues in Germany at the time. They recommended taking Duogynon off the market. A former Schering employee is ready today to put these internal doubts on record in court. After trial files stored in the State Archives in Berlin could be viewed in 2016, from which it emerged that even leading Schering employees did not rule out a causal connection between the use of Duogynon and the malformations, the case went to court again in Germany. In June 2016, a murder complaint was filed on behalf of the mother of an affected child. Murder is a crime that does not expire.

In May 2019, 38 members of the Bundestag from the CDU / CSU, SPD, Greens and Left wrote a joint letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel . In it they express an urgent request that the Chancellor should look into the matter.

In the UK, the pregnancy test was marketed under the brand name Primodos . Due to an initiative of those affected and pressure from some members of parliament, the British government set up a commission of inquiry into the complex in 2014. However, the investigation is criticized as being opaque and there are concerns about the independence of certain committee members. The results of the study published in October 2017 showed that there was no causal relationship between the use of Primodos during pregnancy and malformations in infants.

literature

  • Eckart Roloff and Karin Henke-Wendt: Duogynon - again Contergan, but almost secret? In: dies., Damaged instead of cured. Major German medical and pharmaceutical scandals. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 49–63, ISBN 978-3-7776-2763-2 .
  • Wilhelm Bartmann: Between tradition and progress. From the history of the pharmaceutical divisions of Bayer, Hoechst and Schering from 1935 to 1975. Stuttgart 2003.

Web links

Commons : Schering  - collection of images, videos and audio files

On Schering's Duogynon scandal in Germany:

For the British investigation of Schering's Primodos pregnancy test  :

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schering AG: Annual Report 2005. (PDF; 3.9 MB) Archived from the original on October 4, 2006 ; Retrieved April 8, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Reinhard Hildebrand: Formalin. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 410.
  3. ↑ Cöpenicker Strasse 51–56 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1929, part 4, Grünau, p. 1786.
  4. ↑ Gert J. Wlasich: The Schering AG in the time of National Socialism. Kalwang & Eis, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814203-1-9 , pp. 63-77.
  5. ↑ Heimatverein Steglitz. Retrieved October 19, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Schering rejects Merck's offer . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 12, 2006.
  7. ↑ Higgins takes the helm . ( Memento from May 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 14, 2006
  8. ↑ The traditional Berlin brand Schering disappears. Retrieved March 21, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Public Notice AUREG. Retrieved March 22, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Economic archive portal . Schering Archive. Retrieved October 23, 2016 .
  11. ↑ a b G. Tümmler, C. Schaefer: Duogynon: Congenital malformations after application of the estrogen-progesterone combination in pregnancy - evaluation of a retrospective case series. In: Bulletin on drug safety. Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices and Paul Ehrlich Institute , Issue 4, December 2012, pp. 20–23.
  12. ↑ a b U. Ludwig: Chance for justice . In: Spiegel . No. 23 , 2010, p. 44-47 .
  13. ↑ Disabled person loses trial against Bayer Schering. on: Spiegel online , January 11, 2011.
  14. ^ Duogynon lawsuit: The trial begins on June 1. CBG press release of March 7, 2012.
  15. ↑ Damage claims against Bayer-Schering dismissed. on: rbb Online , July 5, 2012.
  16. ↑ Drug damage: dispute over Duogynon continues. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt.
  17. ↑ Second Contergan? A teacher fights against the pharmaceutical company Bayer. on: welt.de
  18. ↑ Udo Ludwig, Christian Schweppe: No word for the victims . In: Der Spiegel . tape 27/2016 , July 2, 2016.
  19. ↑ https://duogynonopfer.de/wp-content/uploads/az-duogynon-5-2019.jpg
  20. ↑ REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON HUMAN MEDICINES EXPERT WORKING GROUP ON HORMONE PREGNANCY TESTS. In: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. UK Commission on Human Medicines, October 2017, accessed January 21, 2020 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 21 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 2 ″  E