Covington Associates LLC Advises Inverness Medical Innovations on Third Transaction of 2005
Boston, MA — May 31, 2005 — Covington Associates LLC announced today that it acted as the buy-side advisor to Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc. (AMEX: IMA) in its acquisition of the DetermineŽ and DainaScreenŽ rapid diagnostic test lines from Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT). The transaction is expected to close at the end of June, and is valued at $56.5 million.Inverness Medical Innovations, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a manufacturer and seller of consumer and professional diagnostic products focused on women's health, cardiology and infectious disease. It has purchased the manufacturing equipment and certain intellectual property rights to DetermineŽ and DainaScreenŽ, which provide rapid results for detecting several diseases, including hepatitis, HIV, and syphilis. The DetermineŽ products are marketed outside of the United States. Under the terms of the agreement, Abbott will continue to distribute the DetermineŽ products for the next 32 months, allowing it to continue its Abbott Access to HIV care program, which distributes the HIV tests at no profit in Africa and the least developed countries throughout the world.
According to Ron Zwanziger, CEO of Inverness, "This acquisition allows Inverness to enhance its professional diagnostics product line with the addition of the premiere rapid HIV test worldwide."
Tom Cibotti, a Managing Director at Covington Associates and lead advisor to Inverness Medical on the transaction, was quoted as saying "Inverness' most recent acquisition, along with its acquisitions earlier this year of Binax, Inc. and Ischemia Technologies serves to further establish Inverness Medical as a leader in rapid diagnostics worldwide."
About Covington Associates
Covington Associates is a specialty investment banking firm offering financial advisory services in the areas of mergers, acquisitions and capital raising. For more than a decade, Covington Associates' senior advisors have been providing a superior level of service to middle-market companies in the healthcare, technology and industrial/consumer sectors. Covington Associates has completed transactions ranging from $5 million to more than $1 billion for both privately held and publicly traded companies across the U.S. and abroad. To learn more about Covington Associates, visit www.covingtonassociates.com.
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