Bayer beware

摘要

Together, the three German firms would constitute a ?40 billion ($50 billion) Pharmaceuticals company with some chance of competing on the world stage against their European rivals, Roche, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Glaxo-SmithKline. But squabbles between Bayer in Leverkusen and Merck in Darmstadt over a common target, Schering in Berlin, have simply driven up the cost of Bayer's takeover and given Merck a windfall gain of around ?400m.