Invitrogen and Life Technologies entered a definitive merger agreement under which Invitrogen will acquire all of the outstanding shares of both Life Technologies and Dexter Corporation, which owns about 75 percent of Life Technologies, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $1.9 billion.
The deal will create a life sciences and genomics company with annual revenues in excess of $500 million and approximately $100 million in operating cashflow, the companies said. The transaction will also strengthen Invitrogen’s position in molecular biology research, particularly gene cloning, expression, and analysis.
Invitrogen, which makes molecular biology research toolkits, recently entered the bioinformatics arena, after signing a deal to provide Affymetrix with software for its spotted DNA array systems.
Life Technologies makes technologies for the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industries while Dexter makes specialty materials for the life sciences, nonwovens and specialty polymers sectors.
The combined company will use the Invitrogen name and will be headquartered in San Diego. Life Technologies will continue to operate under its name in Rockville, Md.