Company Announcements

GSI Group acquired photonics supplier Excel Technology for approximately $360 million in cash.

Bruce Koepfgen resigned from Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Board in September.

Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology sold its Molecular Beam Epitaxy business to RIBER SA in September for €450,000 ($656,163) in cash and a cash earn-out.

Steven Parker resigned from Oxford Instruments’ Board in November.

Analytik Jena AG acquired 70% of its Romanian distributor in January in a cash-share deal. It intends AJ Romania to be its hub for Eastern Europe.

Millipore opened a 30,000-square-foot membrane-casting facility in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, in October.

Millipore and Applikon Biotechnology BV agreed to codevelop and distribute disposable bioreactor systems.

GE reported that Life Science sales in its Healthcare business grew 16% in the third quarter.

Teledyne Tekmar announced that Sun Analytical Instruments will manage its sales in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Roche Applied Science’s nine-month sales grew 19% to CHF 546 million ($479 million). Sequencing sale rose 88%, Research sales rose 9%, Industrial sales declined 1% and Other sales grew 19%. North American sales increased 26% to 41% of sales, EMEA sales grew 12% to 42% of sales, and Rest of World sales rose 19% to 17% of sales.

Illumina changed its bylaws in October to decrease the number of directors from 10 to 9.

LI-COR Biosciences named Mandel Scientific a distributor for Canada as of November.

In fiscal 2008, Diploma Life Sciences’ sales increased 39% to £62.1 million ($91.6 million) (see page 12). On a comparable, constant-currency basis, organic growth was 7%. Anachem‘s revenue grew modestly, while sales for a-1 envirosciences rose 12%. Environmental business accounted for 25% of Life Sciences’ sales.

In November, PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Science promoted Martina Bielefeld-Sevigny, PhD, to vice president and general manager, Drug Discovery and Research Reagents. She had been director of Molecular Pharmacology within Bio-discovery’s reagents business.

Becton, Dickinson promoted Vincent A. Forlenza to president, effective January 1, 2009. Most recently, he led BD Diagnostics. David V. Elkins was named CFO. Most recently, he served as vice president, CFO, North America and Global Marketing at AstraZeneca.

Sales/Orders of Note

The David H. Murdock Research Institute selected Waters as its primary supplier of analytical science solutions, including LC, MS and data-management software.