Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=JNJ)) is an international Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices manufacturer founded in 1885. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and listed among the Fortune 500.

The corporation's main headquarters is located in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Its consumer division is located in Skillman, New Jersey. The corporation includes some 200 subsidiary companies with operations in over 90 countries, and whose products are sold in over 175.

Johnson & Johnson's brands include numerous household names of medications and first aid supplies. Among its well-known consumer products are the Band-Aid line of bandages, Tylenol medications, Johnson's Baby products, Neutrogena skin and beauty products, and K-Y jelly lubricants.

History

Robert Wood Johnson, inspired by speech by antisepsis advocate Joseph Lister, joined brothers James Wood Johnson, and Edward Mead Johnson to create a line of ready-to-use surgical dressings in 1885. The company produced its first products in 1886 and incorporated in 1887.

Robert Wood Johnson served as the first President of the company. He worked to improve sanitary practices in the nineteenth century, and lent his name to a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Upon his death in 1910, he was succeeded in the presidency by his brother James Wood Johnson until 1932, and then by his son, who was also named Robert Wood Johnson.

Since then, the company has pursued steady diversification. It added consumer products in the 1920s and created a separate division for surgical products in 1941 which became Ethicon. It expanded into pharmaceuticals with the purchase of McNeil Laboratories, Inc. and Janssen Pharmaceutica, and into women's sanitary products and toiletries in the 1970s and 1980s.

The company has historically been located on the Delaware and Raritan Canal, in New Brunswick. The company threatened to move its headquarters out of New Brunswick in the 1960s, but decided to stay in town after city officials promised to gentrify downtown New Brunswick by demolishing old buildings and constructing new ones. While New Brunswick lost at least one historic edifice (the inn where Rutgers University began) to the redevelopment, the gentrification did attract people back to New Brunswick. Johnson and Johnson hired I.M. Pei to design an addition to its headquarters, which took the form of a white tower in a park by the railroad tracks.

In 1982, the Tylenol scare, in which Extra Strength Tylenol capsules were laced with cyanide, prompted a national recall of that product. The company's response was widely praised by public relations experts and the media.

In recent years, Johnson & Johnson has expanded into such diverse areas as biopharmaceuticals, orthopedic devices, and Internet publishing.

Johnson & Johnson is one of the top 10 companies for working mothers in 2004 (http://www.workingwoman.com/top10.html) according to Working Mother Media.

Diversity

Johnson & Johnson was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

Subsidiary holdings

Johnson & Johnson has 198 subsidiaries. These include:

• 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• ALZA Corporation
• BabyCenter, L.L.C.
• Biosense Webster, Inc.
• Centocor, Inc.
• Codman & Shurtleff, Inc.
• Cordis Corporation
• DePuy Inc.
• DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc
• Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc.
• Ethicon, Inc.
• Independence Technology, LLC
• Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, L.P.
• Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc.
• Johnson & Johnson - Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co.
• Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C.
• LifeScan, Inc.
• McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals
• Noramco, Inc.
• Ortho Biotech Products, L.P.
• Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc.
• Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc.
• Ortho-Neutrogena
• Personal Products Company
• Pharmaceutical Sourcing Group Americas (PSGA)
• Scios Inc.
• Tasmanian Alkaloids
• Therakos, Inc.
• Vistakon

External links

• Johnson and Johnson corporate homepage (http://www.jnj.com/home.htm)