The world's second-largest medical device maker Medtronic Inc today disclosed plans to acquire Italy's Invatec, a provider of stents and angioplasty balloons, and two of its affiliated companies for an initial payment $350 million, to expand its peripheral vascular business.

Under the deal, Minneapolis-based Medtronic will make an initial payment of $350 million to Invatec and additional payments of up to $150 million upon Invatec's achieving specific milestones.

Invatec founded in 1996 and based in Roncadelle, Italy is an innovator in the development and commercialisation of interventional coronary and peripheral products.

Its products include balloon catheters, coronary stent systems, multi-purpose angioplasty support catheters, rapid exchange clot extraction catheters, coronary and infrapopliteal guide wire, renal RX stent systems, carotid self-expanding stent systems, proximal flow blockage cerebral protection devices, embolic protection systems, peripheral stent systems, and infrapopliteal balloon-expandable stent systems, as well as minimal invasive radiofrequency ablation systems.

The company sells its products in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, the Far East, and Asia.

Medtronic is a global leader in medical technology – alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for millions of people around the world. The CardioVascular business deals in the treatment of coronary, peripheral, aortic and structural heart disease through collaboration with leading clinicians, researchers and scientists worldwide.

''Medtronic's acquisition of Invatec will accelerate the growth of our CardioVascular business, adding important new products for the coronary and peripheral vascular markets,'' said Scott Ward, senior vice president at Medtronic and president of the CardioVascular business.

''Invatec brings to Medtronic an established international business with a European center of technology development and manufacturing, as well as a strong history of delivering products and high-value solutions to the interventional market,'' said Andrea Venturelli, co-founder, chief executive and technical officer of Invatec.

Invatec co-founder Stefan Widensohler, vice president of global sales and marketing, said, ''Our integration into Medtronic creates a tremendous opportunity to leverage Medtronic's global scale and scope across geographies and functions, from R&D to sales and marketing, to advance the interventional treatment of cardiovascular disease.''

Cardiovascular interventions represent the world's largest sector of the medical device market, generating $10 billion annually on a global basis. A significant growth opportunity within this sector is peripheral vascular disease, a large and underserved market currently estimated at $2 billion annually and growing faster than 10 per cent per year.

Approximately 20 million people in the US and Western Europe alone suffer from peripheral vascular disease, which causes pain, reduces mobility, inhibits wound healing and leads to approximately 250,000 amputations per year.

Together, Medtronic and Invatec will be better positioned to address these and other unmet clinical needs in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, the world's leading cause of death, said Medtronic.

Meredtronics has grown through acquisitions. Earlier in February 2009, Medtronic acquired two heart-valve device makers in deals totaling more than $1 billion, its second and third acquisitions of venture-backed companies (See: Medtronic to acquire 2 medical device makers from venture funds) just two days after acquiring Ventor Technologies Ltd, a privately-held Israeli company for a payment of $325 million (See: Medtronic buys CoreValue, Ventor Technologies for $1.03 billion)

This was a bare four months after it bought Canadian company CryoCath Technologies for about $380 million in a move to expand its treatment portfolio for heart conditions, including abnormal heart rhythms (See: Medtronic buys CryoCath Technologies for $380 million to expand cardiac treatment portfolio)