Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, N.J., will buy Abbott Medical Optics in Santa Ana for $4.3 billion in cash in a deal expected to close early next year.
The division’s products include equipment used in cataract and laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis, or LASIK, surgeries and posted $1.1 billion in sales last year, down about 7%. Abbott has about 525 local employees and about 4,300 companywide.
News reports said the deal adds the surgical product lines and AMO’s presence in foreign markets to Johnson & Johnson’s eye care offerings, which include contact lenses.
Abbott gets cash to help pay for its $25 billion purchase of St. Jude Medical Inc. in St. Paul, Minn., and it continues its refocus on other device markets. St. Jude Medical has about 500 employees at a facility in Irvine that makes products to treat cardiovascular disease.
Abbott Laboratories Inc. in Abbott Park, Ill., in 2009 paid $2.8 billion in cash and debt for what was then called Advanced Medical Optics, which spun off from Allergan Inc. in Irvine in 2002. Allergan was bought by Actavis Plc last year, and Actavis renamed itself Allergan Plc.
Johnson & Johnson’s Advanced Sterilization Products division in Irvine makes infection prevention products for healthcare facilities and employs about 450 here.
Johnson & Johnson has a market cap of about $324 billion.
—Paul Hughes
