By Fink Densford
Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) CEO Omar Ishrak has literally put his money where his mouth is since saying in early June that the world’s largest pure-play medtech maker would look for small-scale investments – $1.05 billion of that money, in fact.
That’s Fridley, Minn.-based Medtronic’s announced spend on M&A since June 5, when Ishrak said the company would turn its attention to snatching up early-stage firms.
“We’re going to look at early technologies, in the U.S. primarily, where there maybe opportunities which we haven’t been able to participate in to the degree that we’d like to, to create a long-term technology pipeline of early-stage technologies that we think can make a difference,” Ishrak said at the time, noting that Medtronic would still “opportunistically” look at larger buyouts, “but that’s a matter of our overall financial bandwidth and our management bandwidth.”
Medtronic has snatched up 5 different businesses since June:
- $235 million for RF Surgical Systems and its RF-tag based device system designed to help prevent “never events” such as leaving a surgical sponge in a patient after surgery, using low radiofrequency signals to track the RF tags embedded in surgical gauze, sponges and towels. Medtronic said it plans to fold RF Surgical into its surgical solutions division of its minimally invasive technologies business.
