A Medical Device Daily
General Electric (Fairfield, Connecticut) reported that it has agreed to buy Whatman (London), the maker of DNA-based products for drug research and police laboratories, for $717 million ( 363 million). GE is adding filters and equipment for its healthcare business with the buy.
Investors in Whatman will get 270 pence a share, GE said. It said that this is 12% more than Whatman’s closing price on Feb. 1, the last trading day before disclosure of the purchase, and 31% more than the closing price on Jan. 14, the day before Whatman reported it had been approached as a target.
GE Healthcare (Princeton, New Jersey), a subsidiary of General Electric, will use Whatman’s products to expand its life sciences unit, formed with the 2004 purchase of Amersham (Buckinghamshire, UK). The GE life-sciences unit, which has $1.3 billion in annual revenue and 3,800 workers, will absorb Whatman’s $230 million in revenue and 1,100 employees.
“We believe Whatman has a very, very strong strategic plan,” Peter Ehrenheim, head of the GE life-sciences unit, said during a conference call. “And we will continue to execute basically that plan, and potentially accelerate that plan because we can put more resources behind it.”
Whatman CEO Kieran Murphy will remain in that position as GE runs the company as a separate entity for now, executives said. There may be some administrative overlap among teams, Ehrenheim said.
GE Healthcare has about 46,000 employees. The Chalfont, St. Giles, UK-based segment of GE provided $17 billion of the parent company’s $172.7 billion in sales last year.
GE declined 79 cents, or 2.2%, to $35.37 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange trading. Whatman rose 23.25 pence, or 9.6 %, to 265.25 pence at the close of trading in London.
In other dealmaking activity:
• Philips Electronics (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) said it is extending until Feb. 22 its nearly $5.2 billion offer for Respironics (Murrysville, Pennsylvania) because it has not yet received approval from the European Union.
Philips reported on Dec. 21 that it would buy Respironics and originally said the offer to shareholders would expire Feb. 1 (Medical Device Daily, Dec. 26, 2007).
The deal has received U.S. regulatory approval. The EU has given Respironics until March 5 to answer questions it has about the merger.
Philips, the world’s biggest lighting maker and Europe’s biggest consumer electronics producer, said it is paying $66 a share in cash for Respironics, a 24% premium over the company’s closing price of $53.11 on Dec. 20.
On Monday, Respironics was trading at $65.59 at midday.
Philips said it had received a preliminary number of tenders for about 60 million Respironics shares by Feb. 1, representing about 77% of the fully diluted outstanding shares.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the first fiscal quarter.
• Wolters Kluwer Health (Conshocken, Pennsylvania) a division of Wolters Kluwer (Amsterdam), a provider of information for professionals and students in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry, reported that it has acquired a minority interest in Logical Images (Rochester, New York). Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The two companies plan to integrate Logical Images’ VisualDx system with Wolters Kluwer Health’s Clin-eguide clinical decision support tool to deliver clinicians visual differential diagnosis within an easy online clinical decision support system.
Clin-eguide helps physicians and other providers make diagnosis and treatment decisions through online access to evidence-based medical information. It integrates content from Ovid, Facts & Comparisons and Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, as well as other publishers.
Designed for clinicians within hospitals, clinics and public health, VisualDx visual clinical decision support software merges medical images with clinical information to guide diagnosis, treatment, and management of visually identifiable diseases.
“Wolters Kluwer Health is a leader in clinical decision support, and our mission is to improve patient outcomes by providing the most accurate and up-to-date medical evidence at the point of care,” said Jeff McCaulley, president/CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health.
“Together, Clin-eguide and VisualDx provide an unmatched clinical decision solution. We combine the medical content and publishing experience of trusted Wolters Kluwer Health sources, like Ovid and Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, with customized, visual differential diagnosis that can lead to faster, more accurate diagnosis and treatment,” said Arvind Subramanian, president/CEO, of Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions and ProVation Medical.
• CV Therapeutics (Palo Alto, California) and Medlogics Device (Santa Rosa, California) reported an agreement under which Medlogics has licensed CV Therapeutics’ proprietary biopolymer stent coating technology to develop a drug eluting stent (DES). CV Therapeutics received Medlogics stock and is entitled to development milestone payments, royalties and other payments on future sales of any products incorporating the technology.
Medlogics recently received the CE mark for its Cobalt Super Alloy (COBRA) stent and said it expects to launch the stent in Europe in the 1Q08. Medlogics expects to use CV Therapeutics’ biopolymer stent coating technology to develop a next-generation DES based on the COBRA stent platform.
“Licensing our proprietary biopolymer stent coating technology to Medlogics with their best-in-class stent design allows CV Therapeutics to potentially generate revenues from future milestones and product sales and to continue focusing on maximizing the potential for Ranexa, regadenoson and our pipeline of pharmaceutical therapies,” said Louis Lange, CEO and chairman of CV Therapeutics. n
CV Therapeutics is focused on applying molecular cardiology to the development of novel, small molecule drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.
Medlogics has vertically integrated drug eluting coating, stent and catheter research, development and manufacturing at its facility. The company said it plans to launch its COBRA stent in Europe this quarter.