Merck to buy Schering-Plough for $41.1B - Wichita Business Journal:

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billion in cash in the secondd pharmaceutical megadeal inrecent weeks. The New Jersey-based companiesw partner on two cholesterol drugxs Zetia and Vytorin which saw abouyt a 20 percent drop in sales in the fourth quarterf after concerns were raisedc abouttheir effectiveness. Valued at $23.61 a share, the deal is a premium of 34 percentto Schering-Plough (NYSE:SGP) shareholders basedr on Friday's closing price. Mercmk shareholders will own about 68 percent of the combined company after the deal is completedand Schering-Plough shareholderz will own the rest. Merck said it expects abougt $3.5 billion in annual savings from the dealafter 2011.
The new company will be calledMerckk (NYSE:MRK) and run by Merck CEO Richard Clark. Mercko said it will finance the cash part of the deal with a combinationhof $9.8 billion from existing cash reserves and $8.5 billion from committed financing provided by . The Merck deal followws Pfizer Inc.'s (NYSE:PFE) announcement late in Januaryt that it willpay $68 billion for Wyeth (NYSE) . Upon the board of the combined company will includ all of the Merck board plus threr ScheringPlough representatives. Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassa plans help in the integration untilthe close, the companiea said. Merck has operations in San Franciscio it got when it acquired Sirnza Therapeuticsfor $1.
1 billion about two years ago. It paid $80 million for Santa Clara-based at about the same time. Merck also has licensinyg and collaboration deals with a number of othed BayArea companies, including Foster City-based (NASDAQ:GILD), Burlingame-based , South San Francisco-based (NASDAQ:SNSS) and Redwood City-bases Schering-Plough has a biopharma research subsidiary in Palo Alto that it formecd in 2005 after consolidating its two West Coasg research subsidiaries Canji Inc. and DNAX Researchg Institute Inc. It also has licensing and collaboratiobn deals with Bay Area companieasincluding (NASDAQ:NOVC) of South San Francisco, Palo Alto-basede and Codexis.