LONDON, January 29: Britain's BOC Group Plc announced the long-awaited sale of its Ohmeda healthcare division for a billion dollars on Thursday and said it would now direct its energies into developing its core industrial gases business.BOC said it had split up Ohmeda, one of the world's leading producers of anaesthetic gases and medical equipment, and sold its divisions for a total 640 million pounds ($1 billion) to Finland's Instrumentarium and US companies Becton Dickinson and Co and Baxter International Inc.
BOC said the deal was expected to "modestly" boost its earnings in the current financial year. Chief executive Danny Rosenkranz insisted he was pleased with the sale price, despite some press speculation that BOC might achieve a price as high as one billion pounds. Analysts said the most important aspect of the disposal was simply that it had been completed after a long period of discussion, leaving BOC free to concentrate on the expansion of its industrial gases operations, which would nowaccount for more than 80 per cent of its annual turnover of around four billion pounds. "It's a matter of focus. It's not a particularly bullish price but at least it's done," Williams de Broe analyst Peter Cartwright said. Salomon Smith Barney analyst Peter Blair agreed.
"The positive thing is that BOC is focusing on its core business...the stock was oversold, it's had a real battering. We are not initially considering returning cash to shareholders. But if we find after a period of time that our balance sheet is inefficient, we will look at what we can do with it, " Rosenkranz said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
