Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., an Israeli company, is the world's leading manufacturer of generic drugs. At present, an incredible one out of every five generic drug prescriptions in the United States is filled with drugs made by Teva. Go look at the prescription drugs in your medicine cabinet right now and I can almost guarantee you'll see the block-letter "TEVA" logo on at least one label. Teva also produces some proprietary, patent-protected drugs, but these comprise only a small percentage of the company's total revenues.
Teva, which means "nature" in Hebrew, was founded in Palestine in the 1930s by Dr. Gunter Friedlander, a German immigrant who was fleeing Nazi oppression. Through an endless series of mergers and acquisitions, the company gradually grew into a worldwide pharmaceutical behemoth, with subsidiaries in over 30 nations, and is presently one of the 15 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world by market cap.