Caliper To Be Acquired By PerkinElmer for $600M

Waltham, MA-based life sciences tools maker PerkinElmer (NYSE: [[ticker:PKI]]) announced this morning that it has agreed to acquire a Bay State neighbor focused on imaging and detection technology, Hopkinton, MA-based Caliper Life Sciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CALP]]), for $10.50 per share in cash. Caliper has a major office in Mountain View, CA, as well.

The purchase, which comes to a net total of about $600 million, represents a 42 percent premium on Caliper’s closing share price of $7.39 on Wednesday September 7. The acquisition is expected to close fourth quarter of 2011, and has received the unanimous support of the boards of both companies. Caliper chief executive Kevin Hrusovsky is expected to join the PerkinElmer leadership team following the close of the deal.

The Caliper deal comes as the latest in a string of PerkinElmer acquisitions this year. The Waltham company acquired London-based X-ray detection technology developer Dexela in June and in May bought Labtronics, a Canadian maker of electronic laboratory notebook products enabling laboratory routine analysis.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.