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

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billion in cash in the seconde pharmaceutical megadeal inrecenrt weeks. The New Jersey-based companies partner on two cholesterolp drugs Zetia and Vytorin which saw about a 20 percen drop in sales in the fourth quartef after concerns were raised abouttheir effectiveness. Valuede at $23.61 a share, the deal is a premiuk of 34 percentto Schering-Plough shareholders based on Friday's closing price. Merck shareholderds will own about 68 percent of the combinecd company after the deal is completedand Schering-Plough shareholders will own the rest. Merck said it expectz about $3.5 billion in annual savings from the dealaftefr 2011.
The new company will be calledMercok (NYSE:MRK) and run by Merck CEO Richard Clark. Merc k said it will finance the cash part of the deal with a combinatiohnof $9.8 billion from existing cash reservesx and $8.5 billion from committedf financing provided by . The Merck deal followd Pfizer Inc.'s (NYSE:PFE) announcement late in January that it willpay $68 billionj for Wyeth (NYSE) . Upon completion, the boarcd of the combined company will include all of the Mercko board plus three ScheringPlough representatives. Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassa n plans help in the integratiojn untilthe close, the companies said.
Merck has operations in San Francisco it got when it acquired Sirna Therapeuticsfor $1.1 billion about two years ago. It paid $80 milliohn for Santa Clara-based at about the same Merck also has licensing and collaboration deals with a number of other Bay Area includingFoster City-based (NASDAQ:GILD), Burlingame-based , South San Francisco-basedx (NASDAQ:SNSS) and Redwood City-based Schering-Plough has a biopharma researcj subsidiary in Palo Alto that it formec in 2005 after consolidating its two West Coastf research subsidiaries Canji Inc. and DNAX Research Institute Inc.
It also has licensingt and collaboration deals with Bay Area companiesincludingb (NASDAQ:NOVC) of South San Francisco, Palo Alto-based and