Beckman Coulter Inc. has made its first deal under new Chief Executive Scott Garrett.
Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter said Wednesday that it was spending up to $140 million to buy biotechnology company Agencourt Bioscience Corp. of Beverly, Mass.
Agencourt, which is privately held, provides genomic services and nucleic acid purification projects.
Genomics, or the studying of human genes, is one of Beckman Coulter’s key pushes in its biomedical research unit. Agencourt is one of five large-scale National Human Genome Research Institute-funded gene-sequencing centers whose goal is to sequence the genomes or organisms with high medical importance.
“Agencourt will become a Beckman Coulter center of excellence for nucleic acid science,” said Elias Caro, president of Beckman Coulter’s biomedical research division, in a release.
Caro said the deal brings technology, “talented scientists” and a services business to the company, among other things.
Beckman Coulter said it would pay $100 million at the closing of the deal, expected at the end of May, and up to $40 million of contingent payments through 2007.
The medical testing company said it expected the Agencourt deal to reduce its second-half earnings by about 4 cents a share, but give a boost in the second half of 2006.
Garrett, whose background includes deal making and spinoffs, recently succeeded longtime Beckman head John Wareham in the chief executive’s position.
In a March interview, Garrett said Beckman Coulter was “screening opportunities all the time” for potential deals and “when we find the right business at the right price, we’ll be making acquisitions.”
