Four Stories I Missed -- While Looking For Something... That (Apparently) Never Existed.

Here is the Verubecestat story -- from Bloomberg. This outcome was widely telegraphed to the NYSE by this and other outlets, back in February of 2017 (while I was still looking -- into April and May of that year) and again in January of 2018, as we noted here. So it goes. More than five years. . . wasted.

Heh. Next, a tiny (by capitalization) sub of Merck called StayWell has acquired a small start up called Provata Health -- in Portland, Oregon -- to do digital health. No needle mover there, either.

Third, as of year end 2017, and as expected -- Merck has completely sold off its stake in BeiGene, since it had gone public, and made that orderly liquidation process. . . easy. At one point in 2016 (continuing into 2017), Merck related entities owned more than 10 per cent of this rising bioscience star.

And the final "missed" story, with nearly no chance to harm Merck's NYSE trading price, is simply. . . bizarre. A long time chemist for Merck was apparently interested in killing rodents in his alley, and inexplicably stole an entire industrial size bottle of cyanide from an area of Merck's labs he was not authorized to be in -- and was observed by other employees removing the cyanide. Crazy. Here's a local PhillyVoice.com story, on it all:

. . . .Richard O'Rourke, 60, of Warrington, Bucks County, told authorities that he dumped 219.79 grams of potassium cyanide into a stormwater inlet in Bucks County in December after his employer at the time, Merck & Co., became suspicious that he had taken it and an investigation was launched. The lethal dose for potassium cyanide is 200-300 mg.

The alleged incident sparked a two-week period of testing and monitoring stormwater systems, outfalls, retention, waterways and their tributaries in the Philadelphia area earlier this winter, according to an affidavit from the Upper Gwynedd Township Police Department.

But officials said the significant rainfall that fell several days after O'Rourke allegedly dumped the chemical should have been able to flush it out of any stormwater inlet. . . .

No large employer can reliably prevent any employee -- especially a quiet one, who clearly had a screw loose -- from (without warning) doing this sort of irrational nonsense. Now you know -- and. . . sometimes it is better to "freeze nearby, than to burn at a distance," it seems.

नमस्ते