A Financial Comparison of U.S. and European Pharmaceutical Companies

There are differences in how European and American companies are managed. American companies have one primary goal: to make money. European companies often have multiple objectives. We present a hypothesis that American companies have better short-term profit performance when compared to their European counterparts. A comparison is performed with financial ratios using publicly available information. While U.S. companies tend to be fairly similar, the European businesses are not so homogeneous. We find that there are differences between the U.S. and European companies, and the hypothesis is supported by the analysis