Indian company to acquire Criticare Systems in Waukesha
Waukesha-based Criticare Systems Inc. announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Opto Circuits Ltd. of Bangalore, India.
Opto Circuits plans to pay $5.50 per share, or $68 million in combined debt and cash, to acquire Criticare.
Upon completion of the merger, Criticare will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Opto Circuits.
The board of directors of Criticare has unanimously recommended that the stockholders of Criticare accept the offer and tender their shares of Criticare common stock pursuant to the offer.
Emil Soika, president and chief executive officer of Criticare, said the company’s leadership team and employees will remain intact after the acquisition.
"I think things will pretty much remain the same. I don’t expect to see changes," Soika told SBT. "It’s a public company, so if someone comes in and offers a premium to the share price, you’ve got to pay attention. This is an unsolicited offer."
Criticare designs, manufactures, and markets cost-effective patient monitoring systems and noninvasive sensors for a wide range of hospitals and alternate health care environments throughout the world.
Opto Circuits is a leading Indian manufacturer of health care equipment whose products include digital thermometers, sensors, probes, pulse oximeters, patient monitoring systems, cardiac stents and catheters.
"We believe this transaction will provide significant value to our stockholders, and will accelerate Criticare’s growth through enhanced market presence while creating a stronger platform to serve our customers worldwide," Soika said.
Vinod Ramnani, chairman and managing director of Opto Circuits, said, "We are delighted to expand our presence in Patient Monitoring through this acquisition. Criticare has built a very strong reputation for high-quality and innovative products and services. This transaction will open many new global markets for Criticare’s products and will greatly enhance Opto Circuits’ product offering and presence in the United States. We are confident that our global infrastructure and marketing presence will further strengthen Criticare’s position as an innovator and supplier of patient monitoring products."
Fortune 500 company acquires Franklin firm
Affiliated Computer Services Inc. of Dallas, Texas, recently acquired Bowers & Associates Inc., a Franklin-based provider of care and productivity management services and health care data analytics, for $8 million, plus contingent payments based on future financial performance.
Bowers’ trailing 12 months of revenue was approximately $6 million, and the acquisition will be funded by ACS with cash on hand. Bowers currently provides care management services and analytic tools to government and commercial organizations whose employees are covered beneficiaries of health insurance plans. Bowers manages care for approximately 225,000 plan members.
All of Bowers’ employees will be retained by ACS, which is a Fortune 500 company.
The ACS Informed Health solutions provide physicians, pharmacists, payers and patients with access to clinical and claims information from a variety of previously unconnected sources, to enable them to make smarter decisions about health care treatment.
"ACS is already a leading provider in the emerging health information exchange market. Bowers will broaden the capabilities of our government healthcare business to include the delivery of best-in-class, accredited care management services for high-risk beneficiaries," said Christopher Deelsnyder, ACS senior vice president and managing director government health care solutions. "ACS clients will benefit from our enhanced ability to help them provide the highest quality of care."
"Leveraging ACS’ platform will allow us to pursue large-scale implementations and provide deeper value to our customers," said Tim Bowers, chief executive officer of Bowers & Associates. "The combination of these two skills brings to the healthcare market a unique, flexible offering that can be tailored to meet the client’s specific health management needs."
Bowers was a winner of an SBT IQ Award for innovation in 2007.
Janesville pen manufacturer grows through acquisition
Sanford Business to Business, a Janesville-based pen manufacturer, recently acquired the assets and intellectual property of The Quill Co. Inc., a pen manufacturer formerly based in Cranston, RI. Sanford LP, based in Oakbrook, IL is a unit of Newell Rubbermaid Inc., which is based in Atlanta, GA.
Sanford started accepting orders for Quill Co.’s pens on Feb. 1, and the company’s machinery will be installed in its Janesville plant by the end of the month. Production of the Quill pens is expected to be operational today, according to a Sanford release.
New Berlin printer acquires assets of Welsh Bindery
Letterhead Press Inc. (LPI), a New Berlin-based firm that specializes in foil stamping, embossing, die-cutting, holograms, point-of-purchase displays and custom design of printed materials, has acquired selected assets of Welsh Bindery, a printing company also located in New Berlin that closed its doors in December.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The transaction did not include real estate because Welsh Bindery leased the space it formerly occupied.
LPI is located at 16800 Ryerson Road. Welsh Bindery was located across the street, which has made moving its equipment easy, said Chandler Young, vice president of sales and marketing at LPI.
"We purchased about 90 percent of their equipment," Young said. "They’re just rolling things across the street."
The equipment should be running by March, said Michael Graf, president of LPI.
LPI has hired about 12 of Welsh Bindery’s former employees, as well as John and Jack Welsh, the company’s former owners. John Welsh has been named a sales executive at LPI, and Jack Welsh has been named a project manager.
Welsh Bindery filed for receivership in the summer of 2007. Most of its employees were laid off at the time.
The company specialized in high-speed folding, stitching and perfect binding of books and catalogs, as well as highly specialized sorting, ink jet addressing and high-speed in-line mailing – capabilities that LPI did not have previously. Welsh Bindery’s clients included large printers such as Quad/Graphics, Young said. While LPI works with many of those clients already, the added capabilities will give the company a deeper relationship with those clients.
"It’s a natural progression of what we were already doing," he said. "It’s exciting."
