How Merck healed itself
CNN Money
Just another pipe dream in PowerPoint: That's what Merck's recovery plan looked like in 2004. At the company's annual meeting with Wall Street analysts that December, then-CEO Ray Gilmartin unveiled Merck's lineup of future medicines. The audience was skeptical. The company had missed three quarterly earnings targets and had been forced to cancel two late-stage research programs for promising drugs. Analysts were in a "show me" mood.
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Indie oil hunter strikes a 'screamer'
CNN Money
The drilling rig rose incongruously over the peaceful college town of Stillwater, Okla. It roared and screeched with activity. Roughnecks, slathered head to toe in mud, scrambled and cursed a blue streak as they threw chain and tripped out two-ton stands of pipe. D.G., a.k.a. "Stretch," a good-natured chain hand, weighed in with a salvo of riotously profane slander, largely addressed to his fellow oil drillers. It could have pinned back the ears of the most depraved drill sergeant on earth. It could have peeled paint.
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