Danaher Buying MDS, Life Technologies Unit

MIKE OBEL

NEW YORK (AP) — Danaher Corp., widely known for its Craftsman hand tools, on Wednesday unveiled a strategic expansion of its medical technology and professional instrumentation business, even as it shrinks other operations.

Danaher Corp. said it will buy a global provider of medical instruments to analyze molecules and shed about twice as many existing jobs and plants as previously announced.

Over the past year the Washington-based company's industrial and tools segment has contributed a proportionately smaller part of total sales compared with its professional instrumentation and medical technology businesses.

In the year ended in July, sales from industrial technologies and tools and components, which includes Craftsman tools, fell to 33.7 percent from 36.4 percent of total sales a year earlier. Revenue from professional instrumentation and medical technologies jumped to 66.3 percent from 46.7 percent in the same period.

On Wednesday, Danaher said it will pay $1.1 billion, including debt, for two businesses, Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex, a mass spectrometry business, plus a bioresearch and analytical instrumentation company owned by MDS Inc.