GE is Shrinking Even Further – Selling Its Biopharma Business to CEO’s Former Company

General Electric is selling its biopharma business to Danaher Corp. for $21.4b. The deal complements Danaher's current biologics workflow solutions. GE’s biopharma business includes process chromatography hardware and consumables, cell culture media, single-use technologies, development instrumentation and consumables, and related services.

GE has shrunk considerably since the financial crisis a decade ago and is seeking to divest even more of its businesses. In April 2018, it sold its Health IT portfolio to Veritas Capital for $1.1b. In May, GE sold its transportation business to Wabtec for $2.9b. In August, its Energy finance portfolio was sold to Starwood Property Trust for $2.6b. GE also announced plans to reduce the scale of its once-ambitious plan for a headquarters along the Boston waterfront this year.

Larry Culp, GE’s first CEO from outside the company, served as CEO of Danaher from 2000 to 2014.  He remade the company from a tired manufacturer to a strong health sciences and tech company. In October 2018, Culp was hired to turn around slumping GE and to steer the company into a healthier future.

Danaher, which recently reported a robust 4% YOY sales increase across all businesses to $4.9b, is expert in integrating bolt-on acquisitions. The company has completed more than six transactions a year on average for the last five years.

Keywords: Healthcare Investment Banking, Healthcare M&A, Healthcare mergers