“The deal marries two life sciences powerhouses that also have an incredible feed into diagnostics and translational medicine,” says Kristin Ciriello Pothier, vice president of the healthcare advisory firm Health Advances in Weston, Massachusetts. “Life Technologies is an innovative life sciences leader that is getting deeper roots into medical technologies, medical sciences and next-generation sequencing.”
A buyout of Life Tech was expected. In January, the company announced that it had retained two investment banking firms to conduct a strategic review—a signal that it sought takeover offers from other companies. Thermo Fisher is essentially a holding company, buying assets with strong brands and leaving them intact as operating businesses. In this case, it “seems to be heavily focused on the financial side of the transaction,” says stock analyst William Quirk of Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. Life Technologies brings a number of established brands (ABI in sequencing and Invitrogen in consumables) as well as distribution, including a very well-considered e-commerce operation that Thermo Fisher doesn't have at this point, and not to the same scale. “That certainly speaks to some of the ongoing efficiencies Thermo Fisher hopes to see with respect to the deal,” says Quirk.
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