Antitrust issues in the U.S. and Canada done,
There's nothing left to do.
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) wed its bride Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) today,
And to that I say: "Boo-hoo."

(Don't worry, I'm done rhyming.)

The ticker will be gone -- oh WYE? WYE? WYE? Not even a hyphenated name will remain. What would founders John and Frank Wyeth think?

Of course it wasn't Wyeth for very long -- only since 2002. Before that it was American Home Products. A catchy name, for sure. But not the company Wyeth had become.

Turning into a Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Abbott Labs (NYSE: ABT), or Bayer wasn't in the cards. It shunned its agriculture division, household products and candy -- yes, candy! -- years earlier. A pharmaceutical specialist Wyeth had become. Perhaps that was its downfall?

Or maybe it was Fen-phen. Merck 's (NYSE: MRK) Vioxx its only saving grace -- from having Fen-phen mentioned every time safety issues arose.

Whatever the reason, Pfizer liked what it saw: A nice vaccinein Prevnar and a biologic with Enbrel. Those should be much harder to copy than Lipitor, that's for sure.

Ironically, it was a smaller acquisition of American Cyanamid that jumpstarted vaccines. Enbrel came through an Immunex partnership, before Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) snatched it up. Wonder what Pfizer could have gotten. Several smaller purchases instead of the $68 billion one? Continued...