Merck KGaA is thinking big...bigger...and even bigger. The company's new chairman, Karl Ludwig Kley (photo [0]), says he's planning a series of acquisitions over the next three years to grow its consumer health and life sciences businesses, all while expanding its pharma and liquid crystal divisions from within. The aim: $13.9 billion in sales by 2010.

That's no chump change, and it'll take several billions' worth of acquisitions to get there. But challenging or no, it's a focused strategy, which is more than Merck KGaA has had over the past couple of years, given the exit of Kley's predecessor, the sell-off of the company's generics division [1], and its buyout [2] of the Swiss biotech Serono.

- read this article [3] in the Financial Times

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