Lake Region Medical, a privately held contract research organization for medical device companies, just got gobbled up by Greatbatch — a big fish in the medtech CRO world. The deal’s worth a whopping $1.73 billion.
This merger will create one of the largest medical device-focused CROs in the world, with some 9,000 employees. As a frame of reference, Quintiles — one of the world’s largest CROs in the life sciences space, has 10,400 employees. Indeed, the rampant M&A activity in the life sciences industry has led to a mass swelling of the larger medtech companies, as the smaller players get routinely acquired.
Some of the large medtech deals of late: Medtronic’s $50 billion acquisition of Covidien; Zimmer Holdings purchasing orthopedics implant maker Biomet for $14 billion, and St. Jude Medical’s $3.4 billion acquisition of heart pump maker Thoratec.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
However, as Greatbatch CEO Thomas Hook tells Reuters, it’ll still hold only 10 to 12 percent of a highly fragmented industry.
The Texas-based Greatbatch was founded in 1970 by Wilson Greatbatch, who helped invent the world’s first successfully implanted pacemaker. The company was started to build batteries that had a long enough life to power these devices.
Since then, however, it has entered the fields of neuromodulation and orthopedic device development and manufacturing.
[PHOTO: Big Stock Photo]
