Mylan-Upjohn merger creates Viatris

Rick Shrum
Observer-Reporter

Mylan NV is now part of a larger global company with a new name.

The generic and specialty pharmaceuticals firm has partnered with Upjohn to form Viatris, which began operations Monday. That was 16 months after merger plans were announced and 17 days after final regulatory clearance was granted.

Viatris’ corporate center is in Southpointe II, where Mylan had its administrative headquarters. That location will be one of the combined firm’s three global centers, the others being in Shanghai and Hyderabad, India.

Viatris, which is incorporated in Wilmington, Del., also has a manufacturing facility and a research and development center in Morgantown, W.Va.

The merged firm began to trade on Nasdaq, under the symbol VTRS, Tuesday. Mylan (MYL) is no longer on that stock index.

Mylan’s merger with Upjohn, a division of Pfizer Inc., gives the new company about 45,000 employees worldwide. But that figure may be reduced. Viatris said in a statement it is beginning a restructuring program intended to save $1 billion.

Viatris’ executive team is a mix of former Mylan and Upjohn officials. Executive chairman Robert J. Coury and president Rajiv Malik have come over from Mylan; chief executive officer Michael Goettler and chief financial officer Sanjeev Narula are from Upjohn.

“We celebrate the ... culmination of more than a decade of strategic, thoughtful work to build a global company with the breadth and depth to provide more efficient access to high-quality medicines to patients and health-care systems around the world,” Coury said in a prepared statement.

Mylan was founded in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in 1961 by Milan Puskar and Don Panoz. It moved its corporate headquarters from Morgantown, W.Va., to Canonsburg in 1976, before relocating to Southpointe in neighboring Cecil Township in 2004. The firm moved to in its current location in the mixed-use park in 2013.