Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier pre­pares to step down af­ter 29 years, hand­ing the keys to the Keytru­da race car to CFO Robert Davis

Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier has seen a lot in his 29 years at the Ke­nil­worth, NJ-based drug­mak­er, but it was 2020 that gave him a true pub­lic face. Amid a spate of po­lice shoot­ings, Fra­zier emerged as a lead­ing voice in the ar­gu­ment for racial equal­i­ty in health­care and so­ci­ety writ large.

And now, just like that, he’s step­ping away from the helm he has held for 10 years — and could be look­ing at a fu­ture as a high­ly sought-af­ter el­der states­man and truth-teller.

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