Bloomberg
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. agreed to buy Dutch drug-ingredients maker Patheon NV for $5.2 billion, extending the acquisition binge that helped turn it into one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of diagnostic and testing equipment.
Thermo Fisher will pay $35 a share in cash, 35 percent above Patheon’s closing price, before Bloomberg News reported that the companies were in talks. Including debt, the purchase value comes to about $7.2 billion, Thermo Fisher said in a statement on Monday.
The deal adds to the $22 billion in acquisitions announced by Thermo Fisher over the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Last year, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company beefed up its suite of testing and technology services by buying electron microscope maker FEI Co. for more than $4 billion. It now offers equipment, instruments and supplies to laboratories and medical research facilities and is a major player in technology used to sequence the human genome.
Through Friday, Patheon’s shares had risen 24 percent since they were sold in an initial public offering in July at $21 each on the New York Stock Exchange.