Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Novartis manufactures the drugs clozapine, diclofenac, carbamazepine, valsartan, imatinib mesylate, cyclosporine, letrozole, methylphenidate, terbinafine, deferasirox, and others. In March 1996, the companies Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz merged to form Novartis; the pharmaceutical and agrochemical divisions of both companies formed Novartis as an independent entity. Other Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz businesses were sold, or, like Ciba Specialty Chemicals, spun off as independent companies. The Sandoz brand disappeared for three years, but was revived in 2003 when Novartis consolidated its generic drugs businesses into a single subsidiary and named it Sandoz. Novartis divested its agrochemical and genetically modified crops business in 2000 with the spinout of Syngenta in partnership with AstraZeneca, which also divested its agrochemical business. Wikipedia