Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [137]
Kendall was pleased. “Rumsfeld, you are a genius,” he said, adding, “or at least I am going to make you look like one.”9
With Kendall’s decision on Diet Pepsi—and a substantial advertising campaign about the benefits of NutraSweet—aspartame became one of the most successful new products introduced in the United States during that period, with sales in excess of $700 million by 1985.
NutraSweet was sought out by people interested in managing their weight and maintaining healthier lifestyles. It is now in use in some five thousand products, reaching hundreds of millions of people in more than one hundred countries worldwide. I never forgot the many years and millions of dollars lost while waiting to get that stay of approval lifted by the government.
Over my first six years at Searle, the company’s earnings per share, as well as its share price, had increased threefold. The overall picture had improved noticeably, but the core pharmaceutical business remained challenging. It did look like we would have some new products by the mid-1980s as a result of our increased investments in the late 1970s, but Searle was competing against larger companies worldwide that were able to outinvest us in research and development.10 To better ensure a stream of new drugs in the decades ahead, the Searle family and the board of directors began to discuss the notion of a merger with another firm.
In the fall of 1985, we began talks with Monsanto, a company that had experience in research and development and was interested in moving into the pharmaceutical sector.11 Though a merger seemed within reach, negotiations got bogged down in the hands of lawyers and investment bankers. I was concerned that over time the merger talks would get into the press. I decided to inform Monsanto that we would agree to the sale of Searle common stock, but only if Monsanto’s investment bankers and lawyers could get an acceptable agreement signed and announced before the New York Stock Exchange opened the following morning. If not, the deal would be off. Sure enough, the deal was announced the next morning, shortly before the stock exchange opened.
I couldn’t help but reflect on those early days at the company, by then more than eight years earlier, when many people—including my own mother—wondered if I had made the right decision to join it. But from the first day on the job I liked the idea of taking on a new challenge in an important industry. Thanks to our restructuring plan and Searle’s talented employees, we had achieved a solid comeback.
The stock price had increased from $12.50 when I took over to $65 per share, a compound annual return, excluding dividends, of 20 percent.* Searle’s profits grew from $35 million in 1977 to $162 million in 1984.12 I was pleased with the results and greatly valued my time with the company. But I was never completely out of politics and government. They had a way of drawing me back in, usually when I least expected it.
CHAPTER 19
From Malaise to Morning in America
Since Joyce and I had left Washington in 1977, the national political scene had changed markedly. As President Carter’s administration seemed to lurch from one crisis to another, his popularity cratered.
Since my meetings with Carter and his new team at the end of 1976, I had had two other noteworthy encounters with his administration. The first came in 1978, when Carter asked the CEOs of large Fortune 500 companies to support wage and price controls to deal with inflation, an effort akin to what President Nixon had attempted. Having been the director of Nixon’s Cost of Living Council, I felt an obligation to share my experiences, even if the administration might not welcome them.1 As diplomatically as I possibly could, I explained what I thought of Carter’s plan, which