Supporting Statement

Merck does not list the World Economic Forum (WEF), Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) or Business Roundtable (BR) among its partners or as recipients of contributions;1 however, WEF and CFR do list the Company as a partner2 and BR lists CEO Robert Davis as a member.3 Why the inconsistency? Why is the Board concealing these partnerships, amongst others, from shareholders?

The Company’s legal duty as a New Jersey For-Profit Corporation requires the Company to serve the interests of its shareholders. Because the Company is not a B-Corporation,4 all additional Company actions and expenditures with third parties (while permissible) must be shown by the Board to be congruent with the interests of shareholders and the Company’s fundamental purpose of making and selling healthcare products.

However, the agendas of WEF, CFR and BR are antithetical with the Company’s fiduciary duty. This obliges the board to explain how partnerships with such organizations serve the interests of shareholders (rather than Directors).

WEF describes itself as an “international organization for public-private cooperation,” and that it was “founded on the stakeholder theory, which asserts that an organization is accountable to all parts of society.”5

Similarly, CFR describes itself as a “membership organization” for both “government officials” and “business executives” on an international scale.6 And BR pretended to redefine “the purpose of a corporation” such that a corporation ought to cater to the special interests of selected “stakeholders” rather than the fundamental interests of its owners, the shareholders.7

Those agendas are incongruent with the interests of shareholders and the traditional—and legally binding—definition of a corporation. The more the Board pays favor to hand-picked “stakeholders,” the less it’s accountable to capital-providing shareholders. In partnering with WEF, CFR and BR, then, shareholders are funding the movement designed to debase their own influence within the Company.

But most importantly, it’s the radical agendas of these organizations that makes our partnerships with them so troubling, not to mention inconsistent with the values of most Merck shareholders.

For example, WEF openly advocates for transhumanism,8 abolishing private property,9 eating bugs,10 social credit systems,11 “The Great Reset,”12 and host of other blatantly Orwellian objectives.

Most shareholders are unaware (since the Board hides it from them) that their capital is in part being used to pursue this anti-human, anti-freedom agenda. Moreover, none of this is congruent with the Company’s basic purpose of providing value to shareholders by making and selling healthcare products.