Beckman Coulter Inc. doesn’t need Biosite Inc. to grow, Chief Executive Scott Garrett said a week after giving up the $1.6 billion chase for the San Diego maker of tests to detect heart disease.
Instead, Garrett said, the Fullerton maker of medical testing instruments and supplies can come up with its own products for the lucrative heart testing market.
“Much of what we were going to do with Biosite we can do internally,” Garrett said.
Acquiring Biosite would have “accelerated” Beck-man’s quest for new medical tests, Garrett said.
“When you think about where we go next in product development, it’s going to be more new tests” that Beckman can create on its own, he said.
Garrett spoke last week before an audience of business school students and guests at the Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine. The university’s Paul Merage School of Business hosted Garrett as part of its speaker series.
The speech came a week after Beckman dropped its bid for Biosite, which now is set to be bought by rival bidder Inverness Medical Innovations Inc. of Waltham, Mass.
Beckman first offered $1.55 billion for Biosite at the end of March and later upped its bid to $1.64 billion amid rival offers from Inverness.
“The acquisition that we were pursuing recently was a very attractive addition to our company,” Garrett said. “But we found ourselves in a competitive situation. At a very early stage, we knew just how far we would go. We were disciplined in our approach and didn’t go any farther.”
Garrett went onto say: “I’d be very happy to own Biosite one day, if it’s possible. But I don’t have any regrets.”
Heart Push
Tests to diagnose heart problems are a key push for Beckman.
Treating and diagnosing heart disease is the most costly thing in healthcare, Garrett said. Helping doctors detect,and even rule out,a heart attack can cut those costs, he said.
As for Beckman’s ability to come up with heart tests on its own, Garrett pointed to a protein it found with the Mayo Clinic that shows up in tests when a plaque buildup ruptures in an artery.
“This is a test that’s in clinical trials now,” he said. “We are confident that it’s going to be a very important test for us.”
Beckman could start offering the test to hospital and other laboratories early next year, according to Garrett.
Garrett, a veteran deal maker, said he expected a contest for Biosite,Beckman’s original offer valued Biosite at 53% more than what it had traded at before. But he said he was surprised at the extent of the chase.
Earlier in Garrett’s career, he ran his own private equity firm with backing from Bank One, now part of JPMorgan Chase & Co. He said he encountered his share of competitive bidding back then.
“It’s nice to have several offers when you’re on the selling side,” Garrett said.
In one deal, Garrett oversaw 2001’s $320 million sale of Kendro Laboratory Products LP in an auction.
Garrett also was at American Hospital Supply Corp. when Baxter International Inc. bought it in 1985. He went on to lead what’s now Dade Behring Holdings Inc., a Beckman competitor, after Baxter sold the business to a group of investors in 1994.
“I’ve been acquired and spun off,” Garrett said.
