Thoratec Corp accepts US heart device maker St Jude Medical's $3.4-bn offer

US heart device maker St. Jude Medical Inc today struck a deal to buy smaller rival Thoratec Corp for $3.4 billion in order to expand its heart failure devices portfolio.

Under the terms of the friendly deal, St. Jude Medical has offered to pay $63.50 per share, valuing the transaction at around $3.4 billion.

The all-cash transaction represents a premium of 35.4 per cent to Thoratec's closing price of $46.89 on 17 July 2015. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The merger agreement includes a 30-day ''go-shop'' period, and requires Thoratec to pay a termination fee of $30 million to St. Jude Medical if Thoratec terminates the merger agreement in favour of a superior proposal during this period, which would rise to $111 million if the agreement were to be terminated post the go-shop period.

The deal will accelerate St. Jude Medical's growth strategy by adding Thoratec's complementary products and technologies to its own heart failure portfolio, said St. Jude Medical in a statement.

''Thoratec's strong core business and rich portfolio of new products complement St. Jude Medical's innovation-based growth strategy and will benefit patients, customers, employees and shareholders of both companies,'' said Daniel Starks, chairman, president and CEO of St. Jude Medical.

''The addition of Thoratec's leading ventricular assist device portfolio expands and enhances St. Jude Medical's established presence in heart failure therapies,'' he added.

Thoratec has the broadest product portfolio to treat advanced heart failure patients. Its products include the HeartMate LVAS and Thoratec VAD, with more than 20,000 devices implanted in patients suffering from heart failure.

The California-based company also manufactures and markets the CentriMag and PediMag / PediVAS product lines.

Its facilities are located in Burlington, Massachusetts; Rancho Cordova, Sunnyvale California; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, the UK; and Zurich, Switzerland.

Founded in 1976 and based in St. Paul, Minnesota, St Jude Medical, which is named after Jude the Apostle, is a medical device company focused on six key treatment areas - heart failure, arrhythmias, vascular disease, structural heart, chronic pain, and neurological diseases.

It manufactures implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. Pacemakers, electrophysiology catheters; vascular closure products; cardiac mapping and visualization systems, optical coherence tomography imaging systems; structural heart repair products, and neurostimulation devices.

It has more than 20 operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide and its products are sold in more than 100 countries and its major markets include the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

With a market cap of $22 billion St. Jude Medical is a Fortune 500 company and has annual sales of $5.6 billion.