World's third-largest company begins trading after mega-merger

Trading of the combined Pfizer/Pharmacia company began April 16 on theNew York Stock Exchange under Pfizer's existing ticker code' PFE. By market capitalization, the newly-merged entity is now the third-largest company in the world.

Discussing the benefits of the merger, executive vice president David Shedlarz said: "as we move to rapidly integrate Pharmacia into our operations, we will be in a position to capture the revenue and expense synergies between the two companies, focus our assets and efforts intensively on our core businesses, and continue to fund long-term R&D at a rate that will sustain our leadership far into the future." Pfizer expects to achieve merger-related cost savings of around $2.5 billion by 2005.