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Merck announced today that it was buying Schering Plough, the Kenilworth-New Jersey based drug maker, for $41.1 billion.

Merck announced today that it was buying Schering Plough, the Kenilworth-New Jersey based drug maker, for $41.1 billion. The deal comes only six weeks after Pfizer said that it would purchase NJ-based Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Superficially, the deal may make sense for the two struggling drug makersthey co-market the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin and also have collaborations in the respiratory diseases area. Also, Schering Plough has the European rights to the anti-arthritis drug Remicade and its 2007 purchase of the Dutch biopharmaceutical company Organon Biosciences NV provides access to several potential biotechnology drugs. Nevertheless, the impending merger will ultimately result in job losses and higher unemployment in the state of New Jersey.

Merck currently employs 55,200 workers and Schering-Ploughwhich grew significantly with its purchase of Organonalso has about 55,000 employees. While no immediate job cuts are planned, a company spokesperson acknowledged that the size of the combined workforce will be reduced by approximately 15%-20% over the next year or so. This means that as many as 20,000 pharmaceutical employees may lose their jobsa time when unemployment in NJ is approaching 10 percent! My sources tell me that Merck employees are already on edge because of surprise layoffs that occurred in early September, 2008. I suspect that employee anxiety will be extremely high at both companies for the foreseeable futurenever a good thing from a productivity point of view.

According to press releases, Schering-Plough's shareholders will get $10.50 in cash and 0.5767 Merck shares for each Schering-Plough share they own. That's a 34 percent premium to Schering-Plough's closing stock price on Friday. Merck's top executive, Chairman and CEO Richard Clark, will lead the combined company, which will attempt to remain a dominant player in treatment areas including cholesterol, respiratory, infectious disease and women's drugs, as well as vaccines. Schering-Plough's CEO, Fred Hassan, will participate in planning integration of the two companies until the close of the deal, which is expected in the fourth quarter. The transaction is to be structured as a reverse merger. Schering-Plough will be the surviving corporation but will take the name Merck. The new company will remain at Merck's headquarters in Whitehouse Station, N.J. and a company spokesperson indicated that a "substantial majority" of employees of Schering-Plough will remain with the newly-formed company. The combined revenue of both companies in 2008 was $47 billion.

Mr. Hassan, a talented, turn-around pharmaceutical executive, took over Schering-Plough six years ago as chairman and CEOa time when the company was struggling with a $500 million fine (the largest ever at the time) imposed by the US Food and Drug Administration because of chronic manufacturing problems. While Schering-Plough is now in much better financial shape than when Mr. Hassan first arrived at the company, its stock price is currently almost identical to the price when he took over (it lost 50% of its value in the past 18 months). Lets see whether or not Richard Clark, Mercks current Chairman and CEO, has the mettle to run the combined company. While Schering-Plough has long been rumored to be a takeover target, I dont think that the Merck-Schering Plough deal is a particularly good or strategic one. Both companies have been struggling of late because of near empty drug pipelines and the ongoing brouhaha over Zetia, Vytorin and Mercks Vioxx. Further, both companies face price reductions and slumping sales in the next year or so because several blockbuster drugs will lose patent protection and face stiff competition from generic drug manufacturers.

Like the Pfizer-Wyeth deal, the Merck-Schering Plough merger may little more than a red herring. I still fail to see how merging two oversized, struggling pharmaceutical companies can possibly result in the creation of a single successful one. The only upside of the deal is that it allows the newly-formed company to restructure operations, eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and cut costs to bolster its stock share price. That said, I dont think that an artificially-inflated stock share price necessarily translates into the innovation that historically has been required to create new drugs to treat unmet medical needs!