OREANDA-NEWS. The Investor Relations (IR) team of Merck, a leading science and technology company, was voted No. 1 in the prestigious "All-Europe Executive 2016 ranking" of Institutional Investor magazine in the category "Best Investor Relations Program - Nominated by the Sell Side" in the pharmaceutical sector. After last year's third place in the same ranking, the Investor Relations team led by Constantin Fest, Head of Investor Relations, made another leap forward in the ranking.

"Congratulations to Constantin Fest and his team. I'm very pleased that our IR team has again been honored. This reflects our strong capital market orientation," said Marcus Kuhnert, Merck's Chief Financial Officer. "We accept with pride the challenge to keep up our intensive and transparent communications with the financial markets," said Fest.

Altogether, more than 700 portfolio managers and 900 sell-side analysts participated in the survey. Important criteria include credibility, competency, expert knowledge, and objectivity in the communications with financial market participants. Other assessment criteria include timely information about future company developments as well as fast response times to queries.