Mer­ck CEO Rob Davis has busi­ness de­vel­op­ment on the brain as he builds 'pipeline of the fu­ture'

Does Mer­ck have every­thing it needs for a suc­cess­ful pipeline? In short, no, CEO Rob Davis told in­vestors and an­a­lysts dur­ing the com­pa­ny’s Q3 call on Thurs­day. But he’s got his eye on “a list of po­ten­tial places to play” when it comes to M&A.

The chief ex­ec­u­tive took a mo­ment dur­ing the Q&A ses­sion to high­light Mer­ck’s busi­ness de­vel­op­ment plans, which may or may not in­clude Seagen af­ter talks of a buy­out re­port­ed­ly stalled back in Au­gust over price. Davis kept short on the de­tails, vague­ly ad­mit­ting that “our ur­gency on busi­ness de­vel­op­ment has not changed.”

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER