Amerisource Health and Bergen Brunswig
Co-founder 2001Background
Cencora's modern corporate identity comes from the 2001 merger of Amerisource Health and Bergen Brunswig, followed by the 2023 renaming of AmerisourceBergen to Cencora. The AmerisourceBergen name itself reflected the 2001 merger of AmeriSource Health and Bergen Brunswig, two of the largest pharmaceutical wholesalers in the US at the time, before the company rebranded as Cencora in 2023 to reflect its broadened scope beyond pure distribution into specialty pharmaceutical services.
Role at Cencora, Inc.
Cencora, originally known as AmerisourceBergen, is the product of a 2001 merger between two distinct, historic drug wholesalers: AmeriSource Health Corporation and Bergen Brunswig Corporation. The older of the two pillars, Bergen Brunswig, traces its roots back to 1888 when Lucien N. Brunswig, a French immigrant, established a wholesale drug business in New Orleans, Louisiana. He later partnered with F.W. Braun in Los Angeles to expand the business to the rapidly growing West Coast, eventually renaming it the Brunswig Drug Company. In 1969, the company merged with the Bergen Drug Company (founded in 1947 by Emil P. Martini Jr. in Hackensack, New Jersey) to form Bergen Brunswig. The other pillar, AmeriSource, was founded much more recently. In 1977, a brilliant, aggressive entrepreneur named Robert E. Martini (no relation to Emil) acquired a small regional drug distributor in Pennsylvania. Recognizing the inefficiency in the industry, he initiated a relentless roll-up strategy, acquiring dozens of small wholesalers to form AmeriSource, which eventually became a publicly traded entity. The defining 2001 merger of AmeriSource and Bergen Brunswig was driven by financial necessity; the pharmaceutical distribution industry was rapidly consolidating, and scale was the only way to survive the crushing pricing power of pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens. The merger created an undisputed national heavyweight, which later evolved into the global entity known today as Cencora.