St. Jude Medical Acquired for $19 Billion

Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill. on Thursday announced it will spend $19.3 billion to buy St. Jude Medical Inc. of St. Paul, Minn., a medical device company with a large manufacturing facility in Sylmar. The announcement sent St. Jude’s stock price soaring, closing the trading day up 25 percent. The cash-stock deal will allow Abbott to strengthen its cardiovascular care division as the combined entity will offer a full range of cardiovascular devices. Abbott currently sells artery-opening stents and heart repair products and aims to blend these offerings with St. Jude’s pacemaker and implantable defibrillator devices, which are largely manufactured at the Sylmar plant. This will allow the joint company to better compete with other device manufacturers like Medtronic Inc., a Dublin-based company with its diabetes division located in Northridge. According to Abbott, St. Jude shareholders will receive $46.75 in cash as well as the remainder in Abbott stock for each share of St. Jude stock, totaling to about $85 a share. Both companies anticipate the deal to close in the fourth quarter, pending St. Jude shareholder approval and regulatory review. St. Jude shares on Thursday closed up $15.82, or over 25 percent, to $77.77 on the New York Stock Exchange.