Medtronic Buys Italy-based NGC Medical For $350 Mln. - Update

(RTTNews) - Medtronic Inc. (MDT) on Wednesday said it has acquired NGC Medical S.p.A., a privately-held Italian company, for $350 million, as the medical equipment maker aims to enhance its hospital managed services.

Medtronic, which had earlier held a 30 percent stake in NGC, expects the impact from the deal to be neutral to its fiscal year 2015 earnings.

NGC will serve as the Managed Services arm for Medtronic's Hospital Solutions business. NGC manages cardiovascular suites, operating rooms and intensive care units at nearly 30 hospitals across Italy and is expanding its service offerings throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Medtronic said.

This new acquisition comes a day after Medtronic announced that it had bought Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation, a Netherlands-based privately-held developer of deep brain stimulation technologies, for about $200 million in cash.

All these small acquisition comes at a time when Medtronic strives to complete the $43 billion acquisition of its smaller rival Covidien plc (COV), which will help Medtronic to shift its base to Ireland and save it from paying high U.S. corporate taxes.

Several U.S. healthcare companies, are increasingly looking at inversions as an option to escape the high rate of corporate taxes in the U.S., which is among the highest in the world, as the U.S. overhauls its healthcare system under the Affordable Care Act. The statutory tax rate in the U.S. is currently 35 percent, while it is 12.5 percent in Ireland.

MDT is currently trading at $63.49, down $0.03 or 0.05%, on the NYSE.