A Medical Device Daily
St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minnesota) reported completing the acquisition of Endocardial Solutions (ESI; also St. Paul) for $11.75 per share in cash for an aggregate price of about $272 million.
St. Jude Medical and Endocardial Solutions originally announced the agreement for St. Jude to acquire ESI last September (Medical Device Daily, Sept. 27, 2004), and stockholders of Endocardial Solutions last week adopted a merger agreement for ESI to become a St. Jude Medical subsidiary.
ESI makes the EnSite System used for the navigation and localization of diagnostic and therapeutic catheters employed for atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation and other electrophysiology catheterization procedures. The EnSite System also is used for the diagnostic mapping of abnormal heart rhythms with a 3-D graphical display of the heart's electrical activity.
St. Jude said that ESI, because of its “focus of increasing clinical adoption of its EnSite System for the diagnosis and treatment of AF and other arrhythmias,“ would become part of its Atrial Fibrillation Division.
The prevalence of AF worldwide is in excess of 6 million patients, according to estimates from St. Jude.
With completion of the purchase, St. Jude said it would record a charge of around $11 million in the first quarter related to purchased in-process research and development.
St. Jude said it is “committed to leadership in the development of curative therapies for atrial fibrillation through innovative technologies, procedures and clinical studies.“
In other dealmaking:
• Ampac Packaging (Cincinnati) reported acquiring Flexicon (Cary, Illinois) for an undisclosed amount.
Flexicon manufactures flexible packaging materials for the medical, healthcare, pharmaceutical, chemical, food and industrial markets. It produces custom-engineered structures, including adhesive laminations, Flexi-Free solventless laminations, heat-seal coated rollstock, pouches and perforated tear products.
Ampac operates from seven sites in North America and Asia, employing about 700.
John Baumann, president and CEO of Ampac, said, “We believe that Flexicon is an ideal strategic acquisition and will be an important cornerstone in helping Ampac achieve its long-term consumer packaging growth goals.“
“We have spent the past three decades building Flexicon into a flexible packaging technology leader,“ said Greg Baron, Flexicon CEO. “We are confident that Ampac will be able to take our solid foundation to the next level.“
Baron is retiring from Flexicon to pursue other interests, with Robert Biddle continuing as president of the company, overseeing its sales and manufacturing facility in Cary.
The purchase follows Ampac's acquisition in July 2004 of a controlling interest in Kapak (Minneapolis), also specializing in producing flexible packaging structures.
• Corgenix Medical (Westminster, Colorado) on Friday reported that because of a lack of progress in completing merger-related financing of $6 million, and the expiration of key dates within a plan of merger, it has terminated the planned merger with Genesis Bioventures (Surrey, British Columbia), first rolled out in 2003 (MDD, Aug. 6, 2003).
Douglass Simpson, president of Corgenix, said he regretted the move “after spending so much time and energy on it. Both companies have been working very hard over the past 18 months to complete this merger.“ He added: “[W]e continue to advance [Corgenix'] core medical diagnostics business while exploring financing and strategic opportunities as they are presented.“
When the merger proposal was announced, the companies said the expanded firm would focus on the development of a breast cancer risk assessment product as well as expansion of Corgenix's immunoassays for the assessment of coagulation, vascular, liver and autoimmune diseases.
Corgenix said its anti-phospholipid test is the first FDA-cleared assay for anti-Cardiolipin. The company is focused on developing diagnostic kits for various immunology disorders, vascular diseases and bone and joint disorders.