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Warren Buffett
Covidien Buying Israeli Biomed Company For $300 Million
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbX60Pktzsk]Warren Buffet on Israel - YouTube[/ame]If you go to the Middle East looking for oil, you don't need to stop in Israel. But, if you're looking for brains, for energy, for integrity, for imagination, it's the only stop you need to make"
Covidien Buying Israeli Biomed Company For $300 Million
U.S. medical devices giant Covidien has clinched a deal to buy Israeli company superDimension for $300 million. The cutting-edge technology for minimally-invasive surgical procedures on the lungs was developed from a toy.
According to Gabelli & Co. analyst Jeff Jonas, other industry giants were interested in buying superDimension. However, a rumored bidding war culminated in Covidien eventually triumphing.
No fledging startup but a mature company founded in 1995, superDimension developed technology to navigate endoscopic imaging systems in the lungs (bronchoscopy ). The company's iLogic System provides minimally invasive access to lesions deep in the pulmonary and lymph nodes.
"Minimally invasive surgery offers many advantages over traditional surgery in the way of cost containment ... shorter patient hospital stays, fewer complications and fewer infections," Morningstar analyst Alex Morozov said.
superDimension didn't start as a biomed company. It started out designing games based on technology to track objects - toys - through reality (i.e. three-dimensional space ), using magnetic field generation and detection. Sensors on the toys would communicate their position to a screen.
That did not quite take off. The company then changed management and direction, hiring David Tolkowsky as CEO and migrating its product from a game into a cardiologic navigation system, to help place stents in nephritic blood vessels. Stents are wire-mesh tubules that prop open blood vessels, for instance after their clearing by catheterization.
In mid-2002, the company developed a new business model, focusing on an entirely new area - invasive pulmonology, with an emphasis on diagnostics and cancer treatments in areas of the lung not normally accessible without radical surgery. Despite the risk involved in entering a brand new area with brand new technology, more investors came on board.
Covidien buying Israeli biomed company for $300m - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News