ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300028
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ZOLLIKON, SWITZERLAND
SOURCE: Bloomberg Business News
Baxter International Inc. said it will buy Switzerland's Immuno International AG for $715 million to become a leader in the world market for blood-transfusion products to treat infections and hemophilia.
The acquisition, to be completed over three years, will create a combined company with annual sales of $1.6 billion and 8,900 employees. That's about the size of Centeon, a joint venture between Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc. and Hoechst AG, now the world's leading blood-products maker, Baxter said.
The move comes as Baxter reinvents itself, spinning off its health-care management business, and follows its aborted $3.8 billion bid for W.R. Grace's dialysis business. With the acquisition, Baxter is poised to benefit from the expected 20 percent to 30 percent-per-year expansion of the $2 billion worldwide blood products market.
``Plasma derivatives are very high margin and growing like crazy,'' said Gargiulo & Co. analyst Gene Gargiulo.
The Immuno purchase will give Baxter ``a bona fide market position in derivatives in Europe'' and intensify competition with Centeon, Gargiulo said.
Baxter will spin off its slower-growing health care management business as a company called Allegiance by Sept. 30. It ended its unsuccessful bidding war with Germany's Fresenius AG to acquire Grace's kidney dialysis services business in February. The new Baxter will concentrate on its higher-margin biotechnology, cardiovascular, blood products and renal businesses.
Baxter shares rose 21/4 to 451/8 in midafternoon trading of 1.16 million, compared with the three-month daily average of 815,600.
Following the transaction, Immuno and Baxter's Biotech unit, Hyland, will continue to act independently under a joint executive management team comprised of Immuno's founders, Dr. Johann Eibl and Dr. Otto Schwarz, and Thomas Glanzmann and Gordon Busenbark of Baxter.
Using donor plasma, the two companies create coagulation products, volume expanders used in treating shock, and immunoglobulin suspensions, used to treat patients with compromised immune systems.
Immuno, based near Zurich, has subsidiaries in 18 countries, primarily in Europe and Latin America.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB