Merck CEO Ken Frazier is retiring after almost 30 years at the drugmaker. He will be followed as CEO by CFO Robert Davis. Frazier will continue to serve on Merck's board as executive chairman. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: [ Ссылка ]

Among the first things Ken Frazier says he reads in the mornings are the obituaries in the New York Times.

“It’s not morbid,” Frazier, 66, said Thursday in a telephone interview. “The reason you read them is because most of us spend our life polishing our resume ... and my dad used to say, ‘It’s what they say about you at the end that matters. Did you care about people?’ That’s not on your resume.”

Frazier has quite the resume, which will get an update in June when he retires as chief executive officer of Merck after 10 years at the helm. Frazier will become the pharmaceutical giant’s executive chairman for some period of time, while the company’s chief financial officer, Robert Davis, becomes CEO.

Frazier’s time leading Merck saw a dramatic shift in the way some forms of cancer are treated, and Merck was the developer of the largest drug behind that new wave of cancer immunotherapy: Keytruda. The medicine drew more than $14 billion in sales last year, 29% of Merck’s total revenue, leading some on Wall Street to question if the company is too reliant on its star drug.

Frazier became a reluctant leader among CEOs as the first to step down from a White House manufacturing council after former President Donald Trump failed to denounce White supremacists who violently marched in Charlottesville in 2017. “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said at the time.

Frazier resigned from the council shortly after. Merck posted a tweet that said the CEO felt he had to “take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” Several other CEOs stepped down as well and Trump shuttered the council.

It put a spotlight on Frazier he hadn’t sought.

But it’s one that friends and colleagues say they’re happy he’s accepted.

“I think Ken reminded everyone that we could no longer afford to look away,” said Dr. Tony Coles, CEO of biotech company Cerevel, who’s known Frazier since they both started at Merck in 1992. “No longer was it simply acceptable for business leaders to remain inwardly focused on their companies.”

A focus on research

When Frazier’s asked what he’s proudest of over his time as Merck’s CEO, he points to the science.

“When I took over, the Street was saying you shouldn’t invest in research,” Frazier recalled by phone on Thursday. “There was one publication, I can’t remember which, that said CEOs could create value in the industry by cutting research and investing in non-pharma assets.”

It was a time when companies like Valeant were catching the eye of hedge fund investors, buying up other drug companies and slashing research budgets. Frazier, hired by legendary Merck CEO Roy Vagelos, bucked that trend. Between 2010 and 2020, Frazier increased Merck’s research budget by 24%, to $13.6 billion.

“I tried to keep the flame,” Frazier said. “I tried to keep the heritage of Merck. Merck is a science-based company.”

But that strategy was out of vogue, he said, “and our stock went way down.”

In 2013, Frazier made one of the most consequential decisions of his time as CEO: he asked Dr. Roger Perlmutter to re-join the company as chief of research.

“Roger made this company what it is,” Frazier said. “I want to be very clear.”

But Frazier also acknowledged his own role in luring Perlmutter back. The physician-scientist, who’d left Merck and moved to California to lead research at Amgen, “doesn’t come back unless he really believes that I believe in that heritage, right?” Frazier said. “You don’t leave sunny Santa Barbara to come to Rahway, New Jersey, unless you’re going to come work for somebody who really believes in what Merck stood for.”

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