Amgen

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN, SEHK: 4332) is an international biotechnology company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. Located in the Conejo Valley, Amgen is the largest independent biotech firm. The company employs approximately 14,000 staff members including the 125 Allied-Barton Security staff and A-post personnel in 2007. Its products include Epogen, Aranesp, Enbrel, Kineret, Neulasta, Neupogen, Sensipar / Mimpara and Nplate. Epogen and Neupogen (the company's first products on the market) were the two most successful biopharmaceutical products at the time of their respective releases.

BusinessWeek ranked Amgen fourth on the S&P 500 for being the most "future-oriented" of those five hundred corporations. BusinessWeek ostensibly calculated the ratio of research and development spending, combined with capital spending, to total outlays; Amgen had the fourth highest ratio, at 506:1000.

Amgen is the largest employer in Thousand Oaks and second only to the United States Navy in terms of number of people employed in Ventura County. Amgen is also a member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organization.

With plans to expand into a new campus under construction in South San Francisco, Amgen abruptly halted construction on the plans and instead put the 365,000 square feet (33,900 m2) of new space on the sublease market.

In 2006, Amgen began sponsoring the Tour of California, one of only three major Union Cycliste Internationale events in the United States.

History

The word AMGen is a portmanteau of the company's original name, Applied Molecular Genetics, which became the official name of the company in 1983 (three years after incorporation and coincident with its initial public offering). The company's first chief executive officer, from 1980, was George B. Rathmann, followed by Gordon M. Binder in 1988, followed by Kevin W. Sharer in 2000. The company has made at least five major corporate acquisitions.