This seminar examines the development of the pharmaceutical industry in the second half of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the USA and Europe, the main centres of the large corporations and their largest markets. It analyses their growth and how they met the challenge of the evolving biotechnology industry, in the context of spiralling research and development costs, government pressures on drug prices and greater regulation. The growth of very large international or ‘global’ corporations has taken place across many industries and been defined in different ways. The paper concludes with an assessment of the extent of ‘globalisation’ in the pharmaceutical industry. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 13 March 2012