Merck - what's this sudden fascination with sacred cows?

Walking so fast that others struggle to keep pace, Peter Loescher, the new second-in-command at Merck, slows only to make clear immediately that he sees no sacred cows at the US drugmaker.

While his six-feet-six-inch frame lopes down a corridor of a Merck marketing satellite office in Pennsylvania, Mr Loescher talks bluntly about its headquarters a short distance away in rural New Jersey. The building, he says, is a direct reflection of Merck's insular culture and old-fashioned business operations.

"You would never do [build] this today," Mr Loescher says of Merck's headquarters in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, in an exclusive interview withthe FT.

That headquarters was a crowning touch for Roy Vagelos, Merck's chief executive until 1994, who attained saint-like status within the drugmaker. Performance soared under Mr Vagelos, a doctor and scientist who rose through the ranks.

In 1992, Merck, then the world's leading drugmaker, moved to the isolated, hexagonal complex surrounded by woodland.

But Mr Loescher's frank talk about such hallowed ground shows exactly what he has been brought to Merck to do.

He is an outsider. Formerly head of US conglomerate General Electric's Healthcare Biosciences unit, he was hired to turn Merck into a more outward-looking, aggressive, disciplined and seamless operation. He has started by pushing managers outside of headquarters.

"Merck in general over many years was too inward looking," Mr Loescher says, speaking with an Austrian accent. "When I arrived here, we had region heads and everybody was based in headquarters."

"And I got rid of this. We have to have a global playbook and the regions have to move out!"

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