Merck & Co (MRK.N) plans to slash thousands more jobs by late 2015 to wring out an additional $1.5 billion in annual cost savings. The No. 2 U.S. drugmaker said on Friday it would reduce its workforce by an additional 12 to 13 percent, compared with the 100,000 employees it had at the end of 2009. But Merck, which is streamlining operations following its $41 billion purchase of Schering Plough Corp in 2009, could not project the actual number of job cuts because they will be offset by new hires in strategic growth areas of its business, such as emerging markets. "It's hard to know what the (job count) will be in 2015," a company spokesman said, but stressed that the overall impact of the job-cut initiative will be major cost savings, some of which could be plowed back into research and to forge deals with other drugmakers.
Merck & Co., Inc. (Merck) is a global health care company. Shares of MRK remained unchanged at $34.93. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $31.06 and as high as $37.68. On average, 12583100 shares of MRK exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 6389.
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