Can someone say "consolidation?" This is about retrenching and is the end game of the SP merger in 2009. In ca 2012 Merck was operating within NJ: Summit, Whitehouse, Kennilworth, and Rahway, all of which examples of old-fashioned corporate America largesse the likes of which we likely will not see again in this country. Who can afford to build multiple campuses of grade AA lab buildings and pilot plants anymore? Big NJ pharma is still recovering from a hang over from late 1980s and is shedding the remnants of that era.
The last time Merck had a single site in NJ was in 1994 before Whitehouse Station was built. This to me is either the beginning of the end game for Merck, or perhaps, and a related thought, the set up of more consolidation. The missing piece, since ca 1978, is pure play biotechnology e.g. Regeneron, who seem to have been able to develop their own medications soup to nuts.
So what I predict will happen is another large merger in ca 2025 with a real honest to goodness biotech or another big pharma. No reason that 100B in yearly revenue will be the next level up.
