GSK Officially Changes Name – to GSK
Major UK pharmaceutical producer GlaxoSmithKline is slimming down not only by spinning off its consumer health business. It is also shedding excess verbiage by trimming its name to the three-letter acronym the company is known by, GSK.
Following the announcement at its late April first quarter 2022 results presentation in part overshadowed by the discussion of earnings figures and the approaching spinoff, the drugmaker wrote to shareholders on May 16 confirming that the name change had gone into effect.
In the run-up to the start-up of the consumer company Haleon, the core company had been calling itself the “new GSK” to distinguish itself from the spinoff. The “new now will also be dropped.
Explaining the move, corporate commentators said the long name, a result of the decades-ago mergers of Glaxo and Wellcome and the combination with SmithKline Beacham, itself the product of an earlier merger, was unwieldy and rarely used.
GSK said the company’s trading symbols on the London and New York stock exchanges will reflect the name change in due course. Shareholders should note, it added, that their holdings also will be unaffected by the change of name and that existing share certificates will retain their validity.
Additionally, the former Glaxo SmithKline’s ISINs, SEDOLs, CUSIPs and ticker symbols for ordinary shares and ADS will remain unchanged.
Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist
