A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

The influential proxy advisory service Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS; Rockville, Maryland) has recommended that BioVeris (Gaithersburg, Maryland) shareholders vote for the company's pending $600 million merger with Roche (Basel, Switzerland) at a special meeting to be held on June 25.

Earlier this week, Glass Lewis & Co., another independent proxy advisory firm, also recommended that BioVeris shareholders vote for the merger.

"We are very pleased that ISS and Glass Lewis, two highly respected and truly independent advisory firms, support BioVeris' merger transaction and recognize the benefits of this transaction to BioVeris' shareholders," said Samuel Wohlstadter, CEO and chairman of BioVeris in a statement.

In the merger, first disclosed in April, BioVeris will be acquired by Roche for cash consideration of $21.50 per share.

BioVeris is a global health care and biosecurity company developing technologies in diagnostics and vaccinology.

By acquiring BioVeris, Roche said it will own the complete patent estate of the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) technology deployed in its Elecsys product line which gives Roche Diagnostics (Mannheim, Germany) the opportunity to fully exploit the entire immunochemistry market.

In other dealmaking:

Hicks Holdings (Dallas), a family-owned private investment enterprise headed by Thomas Hicks, reported that it has acquired a 40% stake in SafeMed (San Diego), a provider of clinical decision support systems.

The investment, financial terms of which were not disclosed, will enable SafeMed to accelerate the continuing implementation of its business strategy, it said.