Siemens Medical Chief: Company to focus on integrating deals

Fresh from a spate of health care deals totaling more than $7 billion, German conglomerate Siemens AG  will take a break from mergers and acquisitions and focus instead on results, Erich Reinhardt, the chief of its medical division, told Reuters News Service.

Munich, Germany-based Siemens, a fierce competitor in the diagnostic imaging market, took a bold turn this year when it entered the in vitro diagnostics market, a segment that includes a wide range of lab-based tests.

In July, Siemens closed a $1.86 billion deal for Los Angeles, CA-based Diagnostics Products Corp. Late last month, European regulators approved Siemens’ $5.33 billion deal to buy the diagnostics division of drugs and chemicals group Bayer AG of Leverkusen, Germany.

The deals make Siemens one of the largest health diagnostics providers by sales, along with Basel, Switzerland’s Roche Holding AG and Abbott Laboratories of the Abbott Park, IL.

Siemens’ rivals, which include Philips Electronics NV of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and General Electric’s Medical unit of Fairfield, CT, have focused on imaging equipment, such as large CT scanners and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI machines, and the development of chemical agents that enhance images captured by the machines.