concerning the merger with Time Warner has been compared to the gutsy moves of Alfred Sloan at General Motors back in the 20's. Sloan outdistanced himself from the competition by constructing an automobile "for every purpose and every purse." He left the competitors in the dust by gaining control of more of the automobile market than anyone else. Case is a forward thinker and has the drive and ambition to make practically anything work if he wants it bad enough, and he wants the merger with Time Warner to be a success. A second merger that happened in the month of January was between pharmaceutical giants Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline. This merger has been in the works for nearly two years and has finally become a reality. The joining of these two companies will create the largest drug company in the world. The conglomerate Glaxo Wellcome SmithKline will have the opportunity to discover more new drugs than anyone else, having a research and development budget in excess of four million dollars and a sales and marketing team of over forty thousand to sell the drugs. The only other pharmaceutical company that can compare in size to Glaxo Wellcome SmithKline is the giant Merck and Co, with yearly sales around 20 billion. Merck and Co will see its patents on a few key products expire in the next couple of years. Although CEO Gilmartin remains true to his stance that Merck needs no one, he did add that the company may be forced to "rethink its position." The pharmaceutical industry has been consolidating for years and appears that this trend will continue. There has also been a sizable increase of mergers in Europe. In the year 1999, the value of European mergers soared to 1.5 trillion dollars. This figure is nearly double the $988 billion dollars recorded in 1998. The emergence of a common currency, the Euro, has made the mergers much easier and more appealing. Once the expected mergers within a country's boundaries have been exhausted, comp...
