Marty Wygod Rides Again

Martin J. Wygod is nothing if not single-minded. Ivan L. Rubin, a friend of the drug-industry dealmaker, remembers a walk on a beach years ago. As they discussed Wygod's latest deal, Rubin looked down and noticed that Wygod's feet were blistered. "He was concentrating so much on what he was talking about that he didn't even realize he was burning the soles of his feet," says Rubin.

That's typical Wygod, a man who has come to be a feared force in the health-care world. A former Wall Street whiz with such clients as raider Victor Posner, Wygod, now 59, made his first big splash in health care in the 1980s with his Medco Containment Services Inc., a pharmacy-benefit management (PBM) company. By wresting low prices from drugmakers to help big customers like General Motors Corp. save money on their mounting pharmaceutical benefits bills, Wygod built Medco into a $2.6 billion business before selling out to Merck & Co. for $6.6 billion in 1993. Briefly, Wall Street even thought Wygod might be Merck's next chairman.