Sanofi: An Elf Aquitaine Offshoot, the Plavix Patent War and mRNA Misstep

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Sanofi was founded in 1973 as a subsidiary of the French oil company Elf Aquitaine. It merged with Synthélabo in 1999, then in 2004 took over Aventis, which had been formed in 1999 from Rhône-Poulenc and Hoechst Marion Roussel. Hoechst was one of the companies created when the Allies broke up IG Farben, the conglomerate that used slave labor at Auschwitz and supplied Zyklon B. On the French side, Rhône-Poulenc's Pasteur Mérieux business was tied in the 1980s to HIV-contaminated hemophilia blood products, with lawsuits filed by infected Iraqis as late as 2006. Sanofi's hostile 47.8 billion euro bid for Aventis met a poison pill defense, until the French government pushed for a domestic deal at 54.5 billion euros.

The prize was Plavix, the blood thinner clopidogrel. In 2006 Canadian generic maker Apotex began selling a copy, and a settlement collapsed after Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Peter Dolan made an undisclosed oral agreement with Apotex, prompting an FTC investigation and his firing. Sanofi and Bristol Myers won the patent case in 2011, with Apotex owing more than $442 million. Sanofi then spent over $17 billion on consumer and generics companies, dropped Aventis from its name in 2011, and bought Genzyme for over $20 billion. During COVID-19 it took a $2.1 billion Operation Warp Speed deal but halted its mRNA vaccine work in September 2021.

• The 2010 purchase of Chattem for $1.9 billion brought Allegra, Icy Hot, Gold Bond and Selsun Blue into the company.
• In 2024 and 2025 Sanofi spun off that consumer unit as Opella, selling a 50 percent controlling stake to private equity for about 10 billion euros.
• A 2015 recall pulled every Auvi-Q epinephrine injector in the U.S. and Canada over inconsistent dosing, leaving Mylan's EpiPen to take the market.
• A flood at a Sanofi Pasteur plant in Toronto led to a global BCG vaccine shortage from 2012 to 2014, and FDA inspectors found mold and nesting birds.
• Sanofi said it renamed itself partly so the name would be easier to pronounce in markets such as China.