This deal can hardly be called a surprise. During the time American Home Products Corp. was shopping its Sherwood/Davis & Geck medical device businesses, two companies were mentioned prominently— Kendall International Inc. , a subsidiary of Tyco International Ltd. , and United States Surgical Corp., each of which would use different components of Sherwood-Davis & Geck to mount a more significant challenge to rival Johnson & Johnson . (Kendall saw in Sherwood a way to give additional ballast to its wound care line with a host of other, related surgical product lines; US Surgical would use Davis & Geck as a way to jump start its struggling suture effort.)
In fact, when Tyco bought Sherwood-Davis & Geck [See Deal]. The deal represents a major commitment by Tyco to...