NEWS OF THE WEEK BUSINESS
MERCK SELLS LAB SUPPLY BUSINESS Sale frees German firm to focus on chemicals and pharmaceuticals
M
ERCK KGAA HAS AGREED
to sell its V W R International laboratory distribution business to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for $1.7 billion. At the same time, Merck will combine its analytics and reagents business with its life sciences operations into a new life sciences and analytics division that will enter a long-term distribution agreement with VWR. V W R is one of the world's largest laboratory products distribution companies, with 5,880 employees and annual sales of about $3 billion. Its 750,000 products range from test tubes to fully equipped laboratory clean rooms to biologic materials for drug development. V W R accounted for 33% of Merck's sales in 2003.
Bernhard Scheuble, Merck's CEO, says the sale ofVWR"will give Merck much better margins
and allow it to better focus on its core businesses of pharmaceuticals and chemicals." He adds that cash from the sale will almost
eliminate Merck's debt and will allow it to invest. Scheuble says the firm will look at acquisitions in the generic drugs field and will investigate licensing opportunities to expand its prescription drug business. T h e sale of West Chester, Pa.-based V W R marks the culmination of a four-year effort by Merck to exit the distribution business. Merck had announced plans for an initial public offering of most of V W R in 2 0 0 0 , but changed course as the I P O market fell from favor with investors. Merck began looking for a buyer for V W R in 2002. Clayton, Dubilier & Rice primarily invests in subsidiaries or divisions of large corporations. It has acquired ^fesco, the former electrical supply distribution business of Westinghouse, and Alliant Exchange, a Philip Morris food distribution business. It recently sold the Kinkos copy chain to Federal Express for $2.4 billion. —RICK MULLIN
HONORS
Celebrating Engineering As NAE Inducts 87 New Members
T
he National Academy of Engineering has announced the election of 76 new members and 11 foreign members. The newly elected members bring the total U.S. membership in NAE to 2,174 and its foreign membership to 172. Election to NAE honors engineers who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature of engineering theory and practice," and those who have demonstrated accomplishment in "the pioneering of new fields of engineering." New members and foreign associates who are chemists or chemical engineers or who work in chemically related areas include the following:
California, Berkeley; Elizabeth B. Dussan V, Schlumberger-Doll Research, Ridgefield, Conn.; Charles 0. Holliday Jr., DuPont, Wilmington, Del.; Csaba Horvath, Yale University; Rakesh K. Jain, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; Andrew J. Lovinger, National Science Foundation; Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos, Princeton University; Denny S. Parker, Brown & Caldwell Inc., Walnut Creek, Calif.; Julia M. Phillips, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M.; Shivaji Sircar, Lehigh University.
NEW FOREIGN ASSOCIATES
NEW MEMBERS Arup K. Chakraborty, University of
HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
Holliday
Horvath
Herbert Gleiter, Institute of Nanotechnology, Research Center Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany; Ludwik Leibler, CNRS, Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris. —SUSAN M0RRISSEY
C&EN
/ FEBRUARY
23, 2004
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