The story
Sigma Chemical Company of St. Louis and Aldrich Chemical Company of Milwaukee were both American specialty chemical companies when they merged in August 1975. The company grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with significant expansion in facilities, acquisitions and diversification into new market sectors.
Early history
1935 – Midwest Consultants was founded in St Louis by brothers Aaron Fischer and Bernard Fischlowitz, who hired chemical engineer Daniel Broida.
1946 – Sigma was formed from Midwest Consultants and manufactured just adenosine triphosphate. They were the first to manufacture pure ATP.
1972 – Sigma's IPO
1951 – Aldrich founded in Milwaukee by Alfred Bader and Jack Eisendrath and manufactured just 1-methyl-3-nitro-1-nitrosoguanidine.
1966 – Aldrich's IPO
1972 – Subsidiary Aldrich-Boranes launched to manufacture hydroboration products
1975 – Merger of Sigma Chemical and Aldrich Chemical to created Sigma-Aldrich. Their first year earned $43 million in sales.
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1999 – Sigma-Aldrich reaches $1 billion in sales
2005 – Announced membership in The RNAi Consortium
2014 – Merck KGaA announced that it would purchase Sigma-Aldrich for approx. $17 billion (€13.1 billion).
November 3, 2014 – Sigma-Aldrich filed a definitive proxy statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to hold a special investors meeting regarding approval for the sale to Merck KGaA.
1970s
1978 – Makor Chemicals
1980s
1984 – Pathfinder
1986 – Bio Yeda, Bristol Organics
1989 – Fluka Chemie AG (Swiss company founded in the 1950s) purchased for $39 million.
1990s
1993 – Supelco, Inc. acquired to enter the chromatography market
1994 – LabKemi AB
1997 – Research Biochemicals International, Riedel-de-Haen, Techcares Systems, Carbolabs, YA Kemia
1998 – Genosys
2000s
2000 – First Medical Inc., Amelung GmbH, ARK Scientific
2001 – ISOTEC (produces stable isotopes used in basic research and medical diagnostics)
2004 – Ultrafine (a supplier of contract manufacturing services for drug development), Tetrionics (a producer of high potency and cytotoxic active pharmaceutical ingredients)
2005 – JRH Biosciences, an industrial supplier of cell culture products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries; Proligo Group, a global supplier of genomics research tools
2006 – Beijing Superior Chemicals, Iropharm, Pharmorphix, Advanced Separation Technologies (manufacturer of products for chiral chromatography)
2007 – Epichem acquired to expand capabilities in materials sciences and semiconductor markets; Molecular Medicine BioServices acquired to provide large-scale viral manufacturing capabilities; announced alliance with Sangamo BioSciences to develop zinc finger-based laboratory research reagents
2009 – ChemNavigator
2010 – Cerilliant Corporation, ACE Animals
2011 – Resource Technology Corp, Vetec Quimica Fina
2012 – Research Organics Inc., BioReliance (a toxicology and veterinary diagnostics company); BioReliance had previously been acquired by Invitrogen and subsequently sold to Avista Capital Partners.
2014 – Cell Marque
2015 – Combined with EMD Millipore to make MilliporeSigma.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sigma-Aldrich, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4