a significant portion of target objectives that are utilized to determine the annual compensation for various levels of management, although the actual weighting of the objective may vary by level of management and job responsibility and may be considered in the determination of certain long-term compensation plans. The portion of senior management’s bonus, merit-based salary increase and stock option awards based on the Adjusted income measure ranges from 10% to 30%.

Despite the importance of this measure to management in goal setting and performance measurement, we stress that Adjusted income is a non-GAAP financial measure that has no standardized meaning prescribed by U.S. GAAP and, therefore, has limits in its usefulness to investors. Because of its non-standardized definition, Adjusted income (unlike U.S. GAAP Net income) may not be comparable with the calculation of similar measures for other companies. Adjusted income is presented solely to permit investors to more fully understand how management assesses the performance of our Company.

We also recognize that, as an internal measure of performance, the Adjusted income measure has limitations and we do not restrict our performance-management process solely to this metric. A limitation of the Adjusted income measure is that it provides a view of our Company’s operations without including all events during a period such as the effects of an acquisition, merger-related costs or amortization of purchased intangibles and does not provide a comparable view of our performance to other companies in the pharmaceutical industry. We also use other specifically tailored tools designed to ensure the highest levels of performance in our Company. For example, our R&D organization has productivity targets, upon which its effectiveness is measured. In addition, for senior levels of management, a portion of their long-term compensation is based on U.S. GAAP Net income.

Purchase Accounting Adjustments

Adjusted income is calculated prior to considering certain significant purchase-accounting impacts, such as those related to our acquisitions of Pharmacia, Vicuron and Esperion as well as net- asset acquisitions. These impacts can include charges for purchased IPR&D, the incremental charge to cost of sales from the sale of acquired inventory that was written up to fair value and the incremental charges related to the amortization of finite-lived intangible assets for the increase to fair value. Therefore, the Adjusted income measure includes the revenues earned upon the sale of the acquired products without considering the aforementioned significant charges.

Certain of the purchase-accounting adjustments associated with a business combination, such as the amortization of intangibles acquired in connection with our acquisition of Pharmacia, can occur for up to 40 years (these assets have a weighted-average useful life of approximately nine years), but this presentation provides an alternative view of our performance that is used by management to internally assess business performance. We believe the elimination of amortization attributable to acquired intangible assets provides management and investors