Medtronic Acquires Ablation Frontiers, Sequenom and Exact Sciences Go a Second Round, Qualcomm CEO Reflects on Strategy, & More San Diego BizTech News

It was like a real-world version of a TV game show in San Diego last week, with some companies announcing a “deal”—and some saying “no deal.” Let’s get on with the show:

—Minnesota’s Medtronic (NYSE: [[ticker:MDT]]) gladdened the hearts of investors in Ablation Frontiers of Carlsbad, CA, by agreeing to pay $225 million upfront to acquire the cardiac device company.

—In the “No Deal” category, the board of Marlborough, MA-based Exact Sciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EXAS]]) started the week by rejecting a buyout offer from San Diego diagnostics firm Sequenom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SQNM]]). Sequenom announced two days later it plans to acquire all shares in the cancer test maker’s common stock anyway. Stay tuned, because this one is far from over.

—In a bit of corporate self-reflection, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs says the San Diego wireless technology company—which controls almost 9,000 patents—is “much more about working with other companies” today. Jacobs added that Qualcomm’s legal battles with its rivals, which amounted to a “religious war,” were over.

—San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies says the $25.4 million it landed in its first round of venture funding is a testament to the strength of its revolutionary got an adjective/gearless or something transmission technology. Cleantech fund NGEN Parnters and the Netherlands’ Robeco Cleantech private equity led the investment.

—San Diego-based Anaphore also raised $25 million in a first venture round to develop a new class of protein therapeutics the company calls Atrimers. The investors included

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.