Next it found a shell into which it could merge: Nova International Films, a Vancouver, Wash. film production outfit with no operational history in a decade but with an over-the-counter listing.

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Historically, it has tried to merge its smaller partners into big "anchor" bottlers, but its success in under-developed markets often depends on small local outfits that know the terrain.

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It would be better to merge the two committees into one, say some economists, including Sushil Wadhwani, a hedge-fund manager who sat on the MPC until 2002.

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After it takes multiple scans, you can align and merge them into a single model.

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On April 27th, China's National Council of Light Industry said it wanted to merge most of the household-products makers into publicly traded firms by the turn of the century.

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Wells Fargo, for example, recently announced it would shut down its independent lending offices and merge that business back into its branch operations, cutting 3, 800 jobs in the process.

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Boeing, the world's largest aircraft maker, has said it will merge its defence, government, intelligence, communications and space operations into a single entity that will employ nearly 80, 000 people.

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When there's an opportunity where vacancies arise, rather than recruit new vacancies into those positions, the department looks at whether or not it makes sense to merge those teams together and form one team with hopefully less staff, saving both authorities money but still delivering the same quality of service.

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Eventually, Wall Street discovered spreadsheets, which lowered their costs and made it vastly easier to do things like take two companies or two financial instruments and merge them into something financeable.

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