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GSK plc

British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ212322
Source-derived summary

GSK plc (an abbreviation of its former name GlaxoSmithKline plc) is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. It was established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, which was itself a merger of a number of pharmaceutical companies around the Smith, Kline & French firm. It is headquartered in London, England.

GSK is the tenth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world by earnings, $9.32 billion in 2025 with $42.4 billion in revenues in the same period. As of February 2026 it is the 175th most valuable company in the world and the 12th most valuable pharmaceutical company with a market capitalisation of $122.6 billion. It was also ranked 388th on the 2025 Fortune Global 500.

The company has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, the eighth largest on the London Stock Exchange behind British pharmaceutical rival AstraZeneca, which occupies the No 1 spot in London at a value of $325 billion, 2.7x more than GSK .

The company developed the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S, which it said in 2014, it would make available for five per cent above cost. Legacy products developed at GSK include several listed in the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, such as amoxicillin, mercaptopurine, pyrimethamine, and zidovudine.

In 2012, under prosecution by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) based on combined investigations of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OIG), FDA and FBI, primarily concerning sales and marketing of the drugs Avandia, Paxil and Wellbutrin, GSK pleaded guilty to promotion of drugs for unapproved uses, failure to report safety data and kickbacks to physicians in the United States and agreed to pay a US$3 billion (£1.9bn) settlement.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “GSK plc” as british multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around British, multinational and pharmaceutical.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2000, 2025, 2026, 2014—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2000-12-27. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with British, multinational and pharmaceutical providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “GSK plc”, the useful work is to connect “british multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q212322. VIAF identifies the subject as 134033966. The Library of Congress control number is no2003000793. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2025, 2026 and 2014.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

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  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “GSK plc”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow GSK plc primary sources, GSK plc archive and British research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from GSK plc” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.