The 2000 Glaxo Wellcome–SmithKline Beecham merger was valued at approximately $76 billion. Announced in January 2000 as a merger of equals, the stock-based combination created GlaxoSmithKline, commonly abbreviated GSK.
Contemporary reports often gave the value as $75.7 billion, which is conventionally rounded to $76 billion in reference works and trivia lists. The combination brought together two major British-based pharmaceutical businesses and was promoted as a way to create greater scale in drug research, development, and global marketing. The merger became effective on December 27, 2000.
The corporate histories behind the deal were already layered. Glaxo Wellcome had formed in 1995 through Glaxo’s merger with Wellcome, while SmithKline Beecham had been created in 1989 through the combination of SmithKline Beckman and Beecham. The figure is sometimes confused with the much larger $182 billion AOL–Time Warner transaction announced in the same period, but $76 billion is the accepted approximate value for the GSK merger.