The former Bruker Biosciences (BRKR; Billerica, Massachusetts), now being renamed Bruker Corp., said that it has closed on the previously reported acquisition of the Bruker BioSpin group. Nearly 57.5 million new unregistered shares of BRKR common stock were issued for the stock component of the acquisition consideration.
At the closing price per share of $10.86 on Feb. 25, the stock portion of the aggregate consideration for the acquisition was about $624.9 million.
The renamed Bruker Corp. has become the parent company of the entire Bruker group of companies.
After closing of the acquisition of the Bruker BioSpin Group, Bruker Corp. now operates in two segments, the life science and analytical systems segment, and the international advanced superconductor segment.
In other dealmaking:
• RadNet (Los Angeles), a diagnostic imaging company, reported an agreement to buy the assets of six Los Angeles imaging centers from InSight Health (Lake Forest, California) for $8.5 million in cash.
A portion of RadNet’s recently completed incremental term loan provided by GE Healthcare Financial Services will fund the purchase, the company said.
The operations of the to-be-acquired centers produce about $10 million in annual revenue, RadNet said. The centers include InSight’s centers in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Westlake, Encino, Van Nuys and Valencia. The facilities operate a combination of imaging modalities, including MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound and mammography.
“Our existing strong presence in many of these markets positions us to uniquely benefit from consolidation and cost savings available in this transaction. The acquisition further strengthens our leadership in many of these local markets and is consistent with our strategy of market penetration, regional concentration and multimodality services,” said Howard Berger, MD, president/CEO of RadNet.
“With so many growth and acquisition opportunities available to us, we are attempting to optimize our use of capital. This very accretive transaction exemplifies the nature of the tuck-in deals that we feel are most advantageous to our growth and future valuation,” Berger said.
The acquisition is expected to close in March.
Radnet provides diagnostic imaging services through a network of 155 outpatient centers. Its core markets include California, Maryland and New York.
InSight, also a provider of diagnostic imaging services, serves managed care entities, hospitals and other contractual customers in more than 30 states in the U.S.
• Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis) and NeuroSurvival Technologies (NST; Petach-Tikva, Israel) reported an agreement for a marker, developed by NST, for molecular imaging of apoptosis in vitro and in vivo in animals.
The marker, developed by NST, will be made and marketed by Sigma-Aldrich under the commercial name Apo-TRACE, the company said. Apo-TRACE is a member of a family of small molecules developed by NST that target apoptosis. Another molecule of the family, ApoSense-PET, is in clinical trials for imaging apoptosis in vivo in humans with positron emitting tomography (PET) and is not part of the agreement, the company noted.
Apoptosis (programmed cell death) is a fundamental biological process of cell “suicide”, inherent in every cell in body, according to NST. Apoptosis has an important role in almost any medical disorder, and its control may hold the promise for substantial advances in medical care for a wide array of disorders, from cancer, myocardial infarction and cerebral stroke, to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, the company said.
Sigma-Aldrich is a life science and high technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing.
NST is a clinical stage molecular imaging and drug development company, focused on the introduction of agents based on the identification and targeting of cells undergoing apoptosis.