st: creating a variable of a firm's latest name

["Ms. Marilyn Ibarra" <ibarra@uga.edu>]

In my firm level dataset I have the name of the firm in each year.  However, the name of the firm may change over time.  How do I create the variable called "name" (below) that would grab the latest name of the firm.  


For example I want to create the variable "name" as follows: 


Firm_ID      name_98   name_99     name_00          name
1              firm_x     firm_x    x_firm         x_firm
2              firm_y     firm_y                   firm_y
3                                   firm_z         firm_z
4              firm_o                              firm_o


Thank you,
Marilyn. 
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