Beckman Coulter to Acquire Lab-Based Diagnostics Business From Olympus Corporation

Big news in diagnostic lab equipment today: Beckman Coulter to Acquire Lab-Based Diagnostics Business From Olympus Corporation:

Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE: BEC), a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of products that simplify, automate, and innovate complex biomedical tests, and Olympus Corporation, a Tokyo-headquartered precision technology leader, creating innovative opto-digital solutions in healthcare, life science and consumer electronics products, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Beckman Coulter will acquire the diagnostic systems portion of Olympus' Life Sciences business for 77.45 billion yen, or approximately USD $800 million.

This acquisition will broaden Beckman Coulter's Chemistry offering, establishing a leadership position with particular strength in larger hospital laboratories. In addition, the transaction will extend our broad chemistry customer base representing a valuable new customer set for Beckman Coulter's Immunoassay products.

Olympus has a big business selling clinical chemistry instruments to the clinical pathology (CP) lab, which is adjacent to the anatomic pathology (AP) lab. Just like people are talking about radiology and pathology converging, the expectation is that CP and AP will get closer.  Interesting...  stay tuned!