Wall Street shrugs off Pfizer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Shares rose Monday as merger news in various industries trumped bad news from Pfizer that it's touted experimental cholesterol dug had to be scrapped.

The Dow Jones industrial average, Nasdaq and the S&P 500 index all climbed in the first moments of trade.

Pfizer (Charts), the world's largest drugmaker, halted development on Saturday of its top experimental medicine, the cholesterol drug torcetrapib, due to safety concerns. The drug was seen as a key for Pfizer sales when its current cholesterol treatment Lipitor, the best selling drug in the world, loses U.S. patent protection in 2011.

In other corporate news, Bank of New York (Charts) agreed to be purchased by Mellon Financial (Charts) in a stock deal being called a merger by the two banks. The deal will pay about a 6.5 percent premium for Bank of New York shares, worth about $28.4 billion. The combination will create the largest securities servicing and asset management firm globally, according to the companies' news release.

Oil prices were lower. U.S. crude fell 64 cents at $62.79 a barrel, while Brent crude futures lost 66 cents to $63.96.

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