Who is the richest pharmacist in the world? – Pharmacist Migration (2024)

1.NavinchandraEngineer

Navinchandra Jamnadas Engineer (born May 1951) is the richest graduated pharmacist in the world. The British billionaire, originally from Kenya, owns Chemidex, an Egham / Surrey based pharmaceutical company that he founded in 1981. The company manufactures:

• Haymine (chlorphenamine) Tablets
• Lyflex (baclofen) 5mg/5ml Oral Solution
• Mucogel Suspension (aluminium hydroxide gel, magnesium hydroxide)
• Penbritin (ampicillin) Capsules
• Ponstan (mefenamic acid) Capsules 250mg
• Tagamet (cimetidine) 200mg Tablets
• Uniroid-HC Ointment and Suppositories (hydrocortisone, cinchocaine hydrochloride)

Navinchandra started the pharmaceutical company after selling his chain of 14 pharmacies tothe German company Celesio for a reported £12 million.

Mr Engineer and his companyhave recently come under scrutiny from profiteering from the NHSby increasing the price of lithium carbonate 250mg.

2. Stefano Pessina

Not a graduated pharmacist however worth a mention, Stefano Pessina is currently number 72 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, with a worth of US$14.2 billion (Aus $18.8 billion). Pessina is the CEO and largest shareholder of Walgreens Boots Alliance, created through the combination of Walgreens and Alliance Boots in December 2014. He had led Alliance Boots before the merger. The sheer size of Walgreens Boots Alliance is staggering – with 8000 pharmacies in the US alone. In total it has 13,200 pharmacies in 11 countries, as well as one of the largest global pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution networks, with over 390 distribution centers. The conglomeration has a presence in more than 25 countries, employing more than 400,000 people.

3. Zhong Huij

Zhong Huijuan is ranked as the 70^th richest person according to www.forbes.com, with a net worth of $19.8B as of 7/20/20. She chairs Chinese drugmaker Hansoh Pharmaceutical, which produces oncology, psychoactive, antidiabetic, and other drugs.

Zhong’s husband, Sun Piaoyang, is also a pharmaceuticals billionaire and leads Shanghai-listed Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine. She owns over three-quarters of Hansoh Pharmaceutical with their daughter, Sun Yuan.

4.TJ Parker

A new recent contender to the title isTJ Parker, the man who sold PillPack to Amazon for an estimated$1 billion.Parker grew up working with his pharmacist father at a “traditional mom-and-pop pharmacy,” in New Hampshire until he went to Massachusetts College of Pharmacy where he metPillPack co-founderElliot Cohen.

If you would like to see the whole list of “Top 10 richest pharmacists in the world” click the link.

1. (Jiang Rensheng & family) – vaccines

Net worth: $26.9 B

Overall rank (on Forbes The World’s Real-Time Billionaires): 59

Age: 67

Country/ territory: China

• Chairs Shenzhen-listed vaccine firm Chongqing ZFSW Biological Products, known as Zhifei, since 2002¹
• Zhifei was a longtime distribution partner of Merck
• Zhifei won Chinese sales rights to the U.S. Pharma’s HPV drug in 2018
• The company is developing its own tuberculosis and Covid-19 vaccines
• Jiang spent his childhood in a remote village in the mountainous region of Guangxi
• Previously spent seven years teaching in a primary school, at 27 he graduated from Guilin Medical School (now Guilin Medical University) with a diploma and was assigned a position at the Guanyang County Health and Epidemic Prevention Station.He was rapidly promoted to deputy chief of the immunisation unit and chief of the biological products department, before being posted to Nanning, the provincial capital, in the early 1990s
• It was not until the age of 46 that Jiang decided to try his luck in the private sector
• A vaccine distribution approach helped generate his first fortune as Zhifei was the sole agent of the only vaccine in the market that countered meningitis C, a disease that spread in China in 2005.
• Since then Zhifei has been logging rapid growth, with revenues hitting Rmb10.6 billion ($1.5 billion) in 2019, versus Rmb1.3 billion just two years before.
• Jiang has a 56% interest in his high-flying company.

2. Andrea & Thomas Struengmann

Net worth: $19.5 B

Overall rank: 94

Age: 71

Country/ territory: Germany

• In 2005, twin brothers Andreas and Thomas Struengmann sold their generic drug firm Hexal (plus a stake in Eon Labs) to Novartis for $6.7 billion²
• They cofounded Hexal in 1986
• The company launched the highly successful cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin, a substitute for Merck’s ZOCOR
• The brothers invest in biotech, pharma, life sciences and healthcare companies through their Zug, Switzerland-based investment firm, Santo Holding
• Their portfolio includes Germany’s BioNTech and Uruguay’s Mega Pharma, initially a joint venture with Argentine billionaire Alberto Roemmers
• In 2008, they established a neuroscience research center in Frankfurt named after their father, Ernst Struengmann
• They became $8 bn² richer over the past year due to BioNTech, the firm that helped Pfizer create a Covid-19 shot
• They own about half of BioNTech, a stake worth $12.2 bn² in all

3. Zhong Huijuan

Net worth: $16.1 B

Overall rank: 124

Age: 60

Country/ territory: China

• Zhong Huijuan is the Chair and CEO of Hansoh Pharmaceutical, which produces oncology, psychoactive, antidiabetic and other drugs.
• Zhong’s husband, Sun Piaoyang (see 4.), is also a pharmaceuticals billionaire and leads Shanghai-listed Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine.
• Zhong owns over three quarters of Hansoh Pharmaceutical with their daughter, Sun Yuan.
• Headquartered in the Chinese coastal city of Lianyungang, Hansoh went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2019.
• She’s a former Chemistry teacher, holding a chemistry degree from Jiangsu Normal University, but quit teaching in 1995³
• She’s the wealthiest self-made woman in the world

4. Sun Piaoyang

Net worth: $14.3 B

Overall rank: 146

Age: 62

Country/ territory: China

• Husband of Zhong Huijuan
• Sun Piaoyang turned formerly state-led Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine into one of China’s largest producers of anti-infection and tumor-treating medicines.
• Sun became the head of Jiangsu Hengrui in 1990, aged 32

5. Li Ge

Net worth: $14.0 B

Overall rank: 153

Age: 54

Country/ territory: United States

• Li Ge chairs Wuxi Biologics, a publicly-traded supplier of pharmaceutical ingredients.
• Li cofounded Wuxi PharmaTech in December 2000.
• Li holds a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Columbia University.

6. (Cyrus Poonawalla) – vaccines

Net worth: $13.6 B

Overall rank: 166

Age: 80

Country/ territory: India

• Cyrus Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India in 1966 with just a budget of $12,000 and built it into the world’s largest vaccine maker (by doses), but originally intending to extract therapeutic serum from horse blood⁴.
• Serum launched its first therapeutic tetanus serum and began making anti-tetanus vaccinations within two years.
• In 1974, it began manufacturing the DTP vaccine, protects children from diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus and in 1981, it created an anti-snake venom serum to treat snakebites.
• Serum produces over 1.5 billion doses annually of a range of vaccines, including for measles, polio and flu.
• Under his U.K.-educated son Adar, Serum’s CEO, the company has invested $800 million to build a new factory to make Covid-19 vaccines.
• Serum has multiple Covid-19 vaccine partnerships and has launched Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
• In February 2021, his son struck a deal to acquire a 60% stake in listed finance firm Magma Fincorp for $475 million.

7. Seo Jung-jin

Net worth: $12.3 B

Overall rank: 185

Age: 63

Country/ territory: South Korea

• Seo Jung-jin is cofounder of Celltrion, a biopharmaceutical firm that makes drugs to treat cancer, influenza and rheumatoid arthritis, among others.
• With the success of biosimilars in South Korea, his Celltrion has become a favorite among investors.
• In March 2021, Seo stepped down as chairman of the Celltrion group.
• Seo’s eldest son Jin-seok now chairs Celltrion Inc. and Celltrion Pharm while his other son Joon-serk chairs Celltrion Healthcare.
• Seo started Celltrion Inc. in 2002 and took it public in 2008.
• Korean tech and pharma stocks have soared in 2020, with Celltrion up to 75%⁵
• Second richest person in South Korea

8. Dilip Shanghvi

Net worth: $11.9 B

Overall rank: 192

Age: 65

Country/ territory: India

• Shanghvi borrowed $200 from his father, a pharmaceuticals distributor, to start Sun Pharma in 1983 to make psychiatric drugs.
• The company is India’s most valuable listed pharma outfit with annual revenue of $4.5 billion.
• He grew Sun through a series of acquisitions, the biggest of which was the 2014 purchase of scandal-tainted rival Ranbaxy Laboratories for $4 billion.
• In recent years, Shanghvi has personally invested in renewable energy and oil and gas.

9. Massimiliana Landini Aleotti & family

Net worth: $9.9 B

Overall rank: 233

Age: 78

Country/ territory: Italy

• Massimiliana Landini Aleotti and her three children inherited pharmaceutical giant Menarini from her late husband, Alberto Aleotti, in 2014.
• Alberto built Menarini into one of Italy’s leading drug companies, with 16 manufacturing sites around the world and more than 17,000 employees.
• Alberto Aleotti began working at Menarini in 1964, and bought the company from its owners in the early 1990s.
• In 2011, Aleotti handed over the reins to his daughter Lucia, who became chairman, and his son Alberto Giovanni, who became vice chairman.
• The family-owned company has an annual revenue of over $4 billion.

10. (Stéphane Bancel) – biotech/ vaccines

Net worth: $9.9 B

Overall rank: 234

Age: 49

Country/ territory: France

• Stéphane Bancel is the CEO of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19 vaccine.
• He became CEO of Moderna in 2011 and owns a roughly 8% stake in the publicly traded company.
• Before joining Moderna, Bancel was the CEO of French diagnostics company BioMérieux, founded by fellow French billionaire Alain Mérieux.
• Moderna’s vaccine for COVID-19 was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use in December 2020.
• Moderna was founded in 2010 and went public in December 2018; the company develops drugs and vaccines using messenger RNA.
• Bancel studied both chemical engineering and business administration at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University

11. Wolfgang Marguerre & family

Net worth: $9.9 B

Overall rank: 237

Age: 80

Country/ territory: Germany

• Wolfgang Marguerre founded Octapharma in Switzerland in 1983 and turned it into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of blood plasma products.
• Positioned in a lucrative market, Octapharma has production plants in six countries, over 7,500 employees and annual revenue of around $2.6 billion.
• In the U.S., which is the most profitable blood plasma market, the company operates more than 70 donation centers.
• Journalists accused Octapharma in 2017 of targeting unemployed and drug addicts in the U.S., who risk their health by donating too frequently.
• Octapharma is a leading corporate sponsor of Save One Life, an international nonprofit that supports children and adults with blood disorders.

12. (Ugur Sahin) – biotech/ vaccines

Net worth: $9.6 B

Overall rank: 249

Age: 55

Country/ territory: Germany

• Uğur Şahin is CEO and cofounder of German biotech firm BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to produce the first Covid-19 vaccine approved in the US.
• Şahin led BioNTech to start on a vaccine for the coronavirus in early 2020, within a few days of the bug’s arrived in Germany⁷; it partnered with Pfizer in March 2020 and got approval in December, using mRNA technology.
• Şahin, who was born in Turkey and grew up in Germany, owns about 17% of BioNTech, which went public on the Nasdaq in October 2019.
• In 2001 Şahin and his immunologist wife, Özlem Türeci, cofounded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals; Astellas Pharma acquired Ganymed in 2016 for $460 million.
• Şahin and his wife Türeci cofounded BioNTech in 2008, backed by German billionaire brothers Thomas and Andreas Struengmann.
• The couple saw their net worth increase by $2.8 bn⁷ after the development of the vaccine
• His main fields are oncology and immunology

13. Murali Divi & family

Net worth: $9.0 B

Overall rank: 276

Age: 70

Country/ territory: India

• S.-trained scientist Murali Divi founded generics maker Divi’s Laboratories 30 years ago as a drug research firm.
• Today, the company is among the world’s top suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
• The company also does custom manufacturing for big pharma companies and produces nutraceuticals.
• Divi’s Laboratories gets more than 80% of its annual revenue of $755 million from exports.

14. (Ernesto Bertarelli) – biotech/ vaccines

Net worth: $8.6 B

Overall rank: 301

Age: 55

Country/ territory: India

• Ernesto Bertarelli inherited biotech giant Serono, maker of the multiple sclerosis drug Rebif, following his father’s death in 1998.
• It was founded in 1906 by his grandfather and he became the managing director in 1936 before his own father succeeded him in 1965⁸.
• With his sister Dona, he expanded the company to $2.4 billion in revenues in 2006 before selling it to Merck for over $13.3 billion in 2007.
• Ernesto and Dona co-chair the Bertarelli Foundation, founded in 1999, which focuses on marine conservation and life sciences research.
• The family’s Waypoint Group has investments ranging from commercial real estate in London to drug companies.
• He also owns the superyacht Vava II.

15. Frederik Paulsen

Net worth: $8.2 B

Overall rank: 317

Age: 70

Country/ territory: Sweden

• Frederick Paulsen inherited small drug maker Ferring Pharmaceuticals, founded by his father in 1950, from a two room research lab in Malmo, after his father fled to Sweden to escape the Nazi’s. His father was one of the first to synthesize essential human hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin, both now commonly used drugs.
• When he took over running the business in 1983, it generated $15 million in annual revenue.
• Today the biotech outfit, which makes infertility, obstetrics, urology, gastroenterology and endocrinology drugs, has estimated sales of $2.2 billion.
• Ferring employs more than 6,500 people and has subsidiaries in nearly 60 countries.
• Board members include Hélène Ploix, former director of the IMF, and Alexandra, the Countess of Frederiksborg, a former Danish princess.
• He’s spent close to $10 million on a rat-eradication project in South Georgia, a remote island (pop. 30) hundreds of miles off southeast of the Falklands, that uses helicopter-mounted machines to sprinkle blood-thinning poison across farms and fields.
• Every two years he builds a fertility clinic in a Russia city to help reverse its drastic population decline⁹.

Forbes The World’s Real-Time Billionaires List accessed on 21/07/21 via https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#12a91a433d78

¹ Jiang Rensheng accessed on 21/07/21 via https://www.weekinchina.com/2020/08/jiang-rensheng/

² Brothers Build $22 Billion Fortune on Hope for Covid-19 Vaccine accessed on 21/07/21 via Covid-19 Vaccine News: Struengmann Brothers Win With BioNTech, Pfizer (PFI) Shot – Bloomberg

³ Real-life Breaking Bad, without the crime? Meet the world’s richest self-made female billionaire Zhong Huijuan, the chemistry teacher who made her fortune in pharmaceuticals accessed on 21/07/21 via https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3106486/real-life-breaking-bad-without-crime-meet-worlds

⁴ Dr Cyrus Poonawalla: India’s Vaccine King accessed on 21/07/21 via https://tetofficial.com/dr-cyrus-poonawalla/

⁵ Seo Jung-jin: Founder who needed loan sharks is now South Korea’s second richest accessed on 21/07/21 via https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/seo-jung-jin-founder-who-needed-loan-sharks-is-now-south-koreas-second-richest/articleshow/77099032.cms

⁶ 10 Things You Didn’t know about Stephane Bancel accessed on 21/07/21 via https://moneyinc.com/stephane-bancel/

⁷ Couple behind promising COVID-19 vaccine remain modest, despite explosion of wealth accessed on 21/07/21 via https://nypost.com/2020/11/10/couple-behind-promising-covid-19-vaccine-remain-modest-despite-success/

⁸ Ernesto Bertarelli accessed on 21/07/21 via https://motivationalspeakersagency.co.uk/technology-innovation-speakers/ernesto-bertarelli

⁹ Meet Frederik Paulsen, The Swedish Pharma Billionaire Without Fear accessed 21/07/21 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2013/03/23/meet-frederik-paulsen-the-swedish-pharma-billionaire-without-fear/?sh=220a2a0f57eb