In Hospital Equipment It's Goodbye Agilent, Hello Philips-Andover

With its $1.7 billion acquisition of the Healthcare Solutions Group (HSG) of Agilent Technologies, the fourth major purchase for the company in less than two-and-a-half years, Philips Medical Systems believes it now has the muscle to compete long term with its principle competitors in the global hospital equipment market: GE Medical Systems and Siemens Medical Systems. As patient monitoring and clinical systems have become more integrated, drawing information in multiple formats from many hospital departments and remote locations, hospitals increasingly want to work with a single supplier, driving consolidation. Being the winner, or highly competitive, on a product-to-product basis, as Philips has been in its markets, is no longer enough. Thus, to maintain a level playing field with GE and Siemens, which have each been bulking up via acquisition this year--notably Siemens with Acuson and Shared Medical Systems, and GE with Critikon, plus many smaller purchases--Philips has also been expanding the size, breadth, and depth of its offerings. For Agilent, the deal puts to rest a half-year's worth of speculation about what it would do with HSG, which had experienced declining orders and revenues in the last two quarters, leading to an August 2000 restructuring.