Merck

Merck & Co. Inc., said Wednesday morning that it would spend $5 billion to buy back shares. Then, in the afternoon, it won a recommendation from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel for its highly anticipated hepatitis C drug. "Merck has a history of leadership in returning cash to shareholders," Kenneth C. Frazier, Merck's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "Together with our strong dividend, today's action reflects our confidence in Merck's strategy and demonstrates our commitment to delivering shareholder value.

Merck Co. officials and anxious township residents have agreed to try to reach a compromise on the pharmaceutical giant's plans for a massive addition to its facility on Broad Street. Merck has petitioned the township for a zoning change that would allow it to build a three-story, 620,000-square-foot office complex - about half the size of Montgomery Mall - as well as a 2,615-space parking lot. The 46-acre site is zoned for single-family homes on half-acre lots. After more than 100 residents turned out at a Planning Commission meeting Monday night to protest Merck's proposal, the commission tabled the application until a 14-member residents' committee could meet with company representatives.

It is not as easy as it looks to run a drug manufacturing company. Or so PRWT Services Inc. has discovered. The politically connected Philadelphia firm, which, among other things, runs impoundment lots for the Philadelphia Parking Authority, took a huge leap - and doubled its size - in 2008 when it bought a Merck & Co. Inc. factory in central Pennsylvania that makes bulk chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry. Now, in an extreme case of buyer's remorse, PRWT has persuaded Merck to buy back the Riverside plant just 21/2 years later.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane said Friday that drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc., would pay the state $8.25 million as part of a settlement in the long-running litigation over the prescription painkiller Vioxx. After legal fees for the Philadelphia firm of Cohen, Placitella and Roth P.C., the state will get $6.9 million. The money will go to PACE, which is a state program to assist seniors pay pharmaceutical bills. Vioxx was first approved by the FDA in 1999, but was later removed from the U.S. market amid reports that it was causing health problems.

Merck & Co. Inc. said Friday that it would cut an additional 13,000 jobs by 2015, despite also reporting higher quarterly sales and profit. The global pharmaceutical giant, which is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., and has operations in West Point and Upper Gwynedd Township, did not say how many jobs would be lost at which facilities. Merck employs about 12,000 people at the Montgomery County sites. Merck said its second-quarter sales rose 7 percent to $12.15 billion from $11.35 billion in the same quarter last year, while net income nearly tripled to $2.02 billion, or 65 cents per share, from $752 million, or 24 cents for the second quarter of 2010.

Merck & Co. Inc. called its last witness yesterday in defense of its recalled pain reliever Vioxx, ending nearly seven weeks of detailed, sometimes acrimonious testimony in a product-liability trial with broad ramifications for the drugmaker. Merck's attorneys and those for Frederick "Mike" Humeston, an Idaho postal worker and Vietnam War veteran who blames Vioxx for his 2001 heart attack, are each scheduled to deliver closing arguments tomorrow. Then the nine-person Atlantic County jury will deliberate on Merck's liability and damages, if any, with a verdict perhaps next week.

Anthony Green felt the hate. He felt it whenever he was disciplined for things he says he didn't do, and when he was suspended for violating rules he didn't break at the Montgomery County manufacturing plant of Merck & Co. Then he heard about the e-mail. One supervisor in Green's department sent e-mail to other supervisors warning that, while he was vacationing, no one should "feed raw meat to the animals" because they were too hard to handle when they strayed from a "dry food diet.

Merck's fourth-quarter profit fell 7 percent as sales of its former best-selling drug Singulair were depressed by generic competition, and the company said Friday that it would delay seeking government approval of a much-anticipated osteoporosis drug. Full-year and fourth-quarter 2012 results were released Friday morning by Merck, which is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., and has a large facility in West Point, Montgomery County. Shares fell 3.3 percent, to close at $41.83. Singulair, a once-a-day pill for chronic asthma, brought in $5.48 billion in 2011 and followed its quarterly average of about $1.3 billion through the first half of 2012.