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Top 20 Drug Companies in the World in 2022
Ty Haqqi
10 min read

In This Article:

In this article, we will be taking a look at the top 20 drug companies in the world in 2022. To skip our detailed analysis, you can go directly to see the top 5 drug companies in the world in 2022.

While major pharmaceutical companies have always been derided for considering profits over the well-being of the general population, even earning the moniker of "Big Pharma" denoting a shadow organization of the major players in the pharma industry. This is especially relevant in the United States, where prices of drugs are not regulated by the government, allowing the companies to exploit the general population, with perhaps the most infamous such occurring in 2015, when Turing Pharmaceutical's CEO, Martin Shkreli, increase the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000%, from $13.5 a pill to $750. However, the past two years have gone a long way in improving the image of the drug and pharma industry.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the infection and death rate kept increasing exponentially week after week, most countries were at a loss on what to do since this was unlike anything they had prepared for. Immediately, pharma companies started to begin research on developing a vaccine against the coronavirus, but there was little expectation that any meaningful achievement would be managed quickly, especially considering that vaccines can take up to a decade for proper development and sometimes not even then, as evidenced by the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS as its more popularly known. While the virus first emerged in 2003, there has still been no vaccine developed for it.

5 Best Pharmaceutical Stocks to Buy in 2022
5 Best Pharmaceutical Stocks to Buy in 2022

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

Despite the enormity of the task, to battle the worst pandemic in a decade, some of the biggest drug companies in the world began researching potential vaccines and a year after the virus first emerged, the first vaccine obtained emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration. 1.5 years down the rate, and the worst of the pandemic seems behind us as billions across the world have been inoculated against the deadly virus.

While many believe that pharma companies had a bumper year after the pandemic as more and more people got sick, the truth is quite different. Many pharma companies saw revenues declining significantly in the wake of the pandemic as global supply chains were completely disrupted. Remember, most multinational companies have production sites which serve multiple markets and with supply chains and logistics disrupted, it was harder to accurately predict supply. This, combined with unpredictable customer behaviors meant that many companies ended up falling below their expected targets.

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