By the '40s, four eggs were in the hands of Maurice Sandoz, heir to the Sandoz pharmaceuticals fortune, whose collection of antique automata--clockwork animals and humans--was to become one of the finest ever assembled.

FORBES: Collecting

One of the most successful mergers in pharmaceuticals, between Sandoz and Ciba Geigy to form Novartis, was between two firms whose closeness of approach was the greater for being based in the same Swiss town (and doubtless run by chaps who had done national service together).

ECONOMIST: How to make mergers work

In 1992 he took a job at Sandoz headquarters in Basel, and by 1995 he was running the pharmaceuticals unit.

FORBES: Reviving Novartis