GE Healthcare Completes Acquisition Of Whatman Plc

Main Category: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 28 Apr 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) announced that it has completed the acquisition of Whatman plc, a global supplier of filtration products and technologies.

The acquisition expands GE Healthcare's offering for life science research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, a key area of growth for the company. GE Healthcare's Life Sciences business is a world-class provider of technologies for cellular and protein science research, and tools used in the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals such as vaccines, cell therapies and antibodies. The addition of Whatman's innovative filters and membranes for laboratory research, life sciences and medical technology applications will offer substantial customer benefits and create significant synergies through complementary product and service offerings.

Commenting on the close, Peter Ehrenheim President and CEO of GE Healthcare's Life Sciences business said "Whatman's expertise and reputation in filtration technologies and sample preparation is a great fit for our Life Sciences business. We believe that combining the skills of the two companies will enable GE Healthcare to create strong added value for customers in biomedical and drug discovery research."

About Whatman

A global leader in filtration technology, Whatman provides innovative life science products to the scientific community. Whatman has developed total sample preparation solutions through its robust line of filtration devices and membranes. The Company's breakthrough protein array technology and FTA® Technology to capture archive and purify DNA at room temperature, enables it to provide novel solutions for the analytical, health care, and bioscience markets. For more information please visit http://www.whatman.com.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

GE Healthcare