Organon & Co. is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. Organon specializes in the following core therapeutic fields: reproductive medicine, contraception, psychiatry, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and anesthesia. Organon sells to international markets.
Organon was founded in 1923 as a partnership between the physiologist/endocrinologist of the University of Amsterdam Prof Ernst Laqueur and Saal van Zwanenberg (1889-1974) who owned an abattoir/slaughterhouse, Zwanenbergs Slachterijen en Fabrieken, in Oss in Northern Brabant. The company's first product was insulin in 1923. In the thirties it manufactured estrogens, in particular estrone under the trade name Menformon.
In 1948, Organon acquired the Newhouse research site in Scotland, United Kingdom. The production of cortisone was initiated in 1953.
In 1962, it bought the stock of the Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek. The company name was changed to Koninklijke Zwanenberg-Organon (KZO), and it merged with the fibre producer AKU in 1969 to become AKZO, later Akzo Nobel. Organon was the human health care business unit of Akzo Nobel. In 2004, Organon acquired active-pharmaceutical-ingredient producer Diosynth.
In November 2007, Schering-Plough acquired Organon BioSciences and veterinary pharmaceutical company Intervet from Akzo Nobel. Schering-Plough transferred Organon to its headquarters in New Jersey. Two years later, Schering-Plough merged with Merck & Co., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada.
In May 2020, Merck & Co. announced that Organon & Co. will be the name of "the pending spin-off of its women’s health, legacy products, and biosimilars businesses, which the company says is on track to be completed by the end of the first half in 2021." Merck completed the spinoff and Organon & Co. became a publicly traded company on 3 June 2021. A copy of the Information Statement sent to Merck shareholders was filed with the U.S. SEC on April 20, 2021 in a Form 10-12B/A, Exhibit 99.