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Cardinal Health, Inc., is the leading provider of products and services supporting the health care industry. Cardinal Health companies develop; manufacture, package, and market products for patient care; develop drug-delivery technologies; distribute pharmaceuticals, medical-surgical and laboratory supplies; and offer consulting and other services that improve quality and efficiency in health care. Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health employs more than 49,000 people on five continents and produces annual revenues of more than $40 billion. Cardinal is ranked 23 on the current Fortune 50 list and was named as one of "The World's Best" companies by Forbes magazines in 2002. Cardinal acquired Whitmore Distribution and Medical Strategies; company name changed to Cardinal Health. In 1971, just six months after his graduation from Harvard's MBA program, 26-year-old Robert Walter acquired Monarch Foods through a leveraged buyout. Walter hoped to build this small central Ohio grocery distribution company--which he renamed Cardinal Foods--into an industry leader through acquisitions, but soon discovered that he was too late: the market had already begun to consolidate. To make matters worse, Cardinal was compelled to withdraw ten tons of salmonella-infected, prepackaged roast beef mid-decade. Since consolidation within the wholesale segment of the grocery business was out of the question, Walter attempted to shift his growth strategy, launching Mr. Moneysworth warehouse supermarkets. By the mid-1980s, Cardinal had three Mr. Moneysworth outlets and plans to open stores in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. But, Walter did not abandon the distribution industry. Rather, he turned to a business segment that was more profitable, more fragmented, and ripe for consolidation: pharmaceuticals. The company made its first foray into pharmaceutical distribution in 1980, when it acquired a drug distributor in Zanesville, Ohio, 60 miles from Columbus, and became known as Cardinal Distribution. Walter used the proceeds of a 1983 initial public offering to launch an acquisition spree that would gain steam over the next decade. During the 1980s, he targeted relatively small, privately-held distributors in adjacent states and regions for his friendly acquisitions. Reasoning that these local managers knew their markets and would work hard to maintain growth, Walter focused on successful companies with managers he characterized as "the kings in our company" in a 1993 interview with Forbes magazine's Reed Abelson. Walter operated Cardinal as a holding company, allowing affiliated companies to continue relatively autonomously. The new subsidiaries brought the parent company geographic growth and economies of scale. He told Abelson, "Knowing what I know now, I didn't know what I was doing. But it worked." Key acquisitions--focused in the eastern United States--included Ellicott Drug Co. (1984); James W. Daly, Inc. (1986); and John L. Thompson Sons & Co. (1986). Walter gave up on the marginally profitable grocery business in 1988, when he sold the Cardinal Foods, Inc., Midland Grocery Co., and Mr. Moneysworth subsidiaries to Roundy's Inc., a cooperative wholesaler, for $27 million. Instead of declining, Cardinal's annual revenues actually increased by one-third that year, and its net income more than doubled. The acquisition of Medical Strategies in 1994 added Healthtouch computerized kiosks to Cardinal's repertoire. These electronic point-of-purchase machines offered pharmacy customers access to up-to-date data on illnesses and treatment options. The kiosks generated income via advertising and promoted featured products with coupons; Cardinal claimed that its more than 1,000 Healthtouch machines "increase incremental sales of the featured products by 20 percent on average." These acquisitions helped make Cardinal virtually impervious to the recession that gripped the country in the early years of the decade. For while customers like hospitals