Pliva

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Pliva is also a river, see Pliva River.

Pliva d.d.

Type	Public (LSE: PLVD, ZSE: PLVA-R-A)
Founded	1921
Headquarters	Zagreb, Croatia
Key people	Željko Čović, CEO
Industry	Pharmaceuticals
Products	Generics
Revenue	profit: $336 million (2005) revenue: $1.174 billion (2005)
Employees	Approximately 6,000 Q2 2006
Website	www.pliva.com

Pliva d.d. is a Croatian pharmaceutical company, based in Zagreb, Croatia. It is the largest pharmaceutical company in Eastern Europe.^[1] Its current CEO is Željko Čović. Pliva has recently recast itself as a generic pharmaceutical company leaving it proprietary business behind.

Pliva operates in over 30 countries worldwide and is the leading pharmaceutical company based in Central and Eastern Europe. It specializes in the development, production and distribution of generic pharmaceutical products, including biologicals, cytostatics, and other generics, as well as active pharmaceutical ingredients.

A team of Pliva's researchers, Gabrijela Kobrehel, Gorjana Radobolja-Lazarevski and Zrinka Tamburasev led by Dr. Slobodan Ðokić, discovered azithromycin in 1980. Azithromycin is marketed in Eastern Europe under the name Sumamed and was licensed to Pfizer who market it in Western Europe and the USA under the name Zithromax, where it is one of the top-selling antibiotics. Royalties from Pfizer provided PLIVA's main income stream until the expiry of the azithromycin patent in 2005. This income was used to fund expansion in Europe and the USA, although some acquisitions have been highly questionable, particularly the acquisition of Sanctura (trospium chloride tablets) in the USA, which failed dismally in the market and was ultimatley sold again at a huge loss of about 150 million USD.

During the summer of 2006, Pliva was the subject of a bidding war between Iceland's Actavis and US-based Barr Pharmaceuticals marking the first significant takeover of a publicly traded Croatian corporation. Barr ultimately prevailed in the bidding when Actavis bowed out on September 18th, 2006. Barr's final bid of USD 141 per share valued Pliva at approximately 2.5 billion USD. Formal change of ownership took place on October 24th 2006.