Merck swallows Schering-Plough and becomes No. 2
Merck &Schering-Plough merger
Related Stories
Related Blog Posts
On The Web
Site Search
Get the latest news alerts: Follow LTW at Twitter
The Associated Press
WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J. — The new Merck & Co. became the world's second-biggest drugmaker overnight, and it's boasting a fat wallet to fund future deals.
The maker of vaccines and cholesterol and diabetes drugs bought Schering-Plough Corp.on Tuesday for $41.1 billion. Merck leapfrogged from No. 8 to No. 2 in the industry by revenue.
The company has about $8 billion in cash and investments and plans to keep investing in deals for rights to new drugs.
Merck says combining the companies – and slimming down the resulting staff of 106,000 employees – will save about $3.5 billion a year after 2011. But it expects the acquisition to boost profits slightly by next year and is forecasting profit growth in the high single digits for the next several years.
Merck operates a vaccine-manufacturing facility in Treyburn Corporate Park in Durham County.
Copyright 2010 Local Tech Wire. All rights reserved.
Featured
Hot Off The Wire
- Hot Off the Wire – $5M bonus for Apple exec; Disney to shut studio, cut 450 jobs; Motorola co-CEO’s pay $3.77M; Adobe CEO pay plunges 68%
- Hot Off the Wire – No ‘xxx’ domains yet, Net agency says; Analyst ups Google stock value; Vin Gupta leaves InfoGroup board
- Hot Off the Wire – AT&T CEO’s pay soars to $20.2M; Analyst downgrades Yahoo; Motorola adds Bing to smartphones
Venture & Innovation
- Venture Briefs – Georgia software firm raises $110M; Few VCs on billionaire list; Entrepreneur outlines strategy for sales leads
- CED picks nine more companies to present at venture conference
- Venture Briefs – A top VC uses blog to generate wider dealfow; CA pays $350M for cloud computing firm; Battery closes on $750M fund
E-mail Preferences
The Skinny
- Another 202 layoffs at IBM push latest count above 2,900
- ‘Social media is a beast’ – So how can your business tame it?
- In tough climate, GSK dedicates plant to fight elephantiasis
- ‘Who’s Cisco?’ New RTP site exec recalls a humble birth
- Google, N.C.? UNC-CH, Carrboro, Chapel Hill want Google Net
- Tweet this from Epic: Three more hints about Gears 3
- ‘The Daily Me’: You want your news mobile, instantly from several sources
- ‘Gears 3’ rumors grow louder – Epic president dropping hints
- Intel-ligent boost for tech – Intel, VCs launch investment alliance
- More Nortel bad news: British pension regulator files $3B claim