Whither Tyco? Whither Hospital Supply?

Tyco International is creating a colossus in hospital supply. But as customers in this consolidated, nationalized market become more demanding--asking for brand name products at ever lower prices--has the strategy run its ground. The demise of American Hospital Supply and new, more high tech focuses of companies like Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories suggests that hospital suppliers to survive must concentrate on higher margin businesses immune to the pressures of national contracting.

The announcement last month that Tyco International Ltd. is acquiring CR Bard Inc. brings to a close the history, as an independent company, of one of the last of the great hospital supply companies of the 1980s. [See Deal] Bard will go on, but as another in a growing number of leading brands in Tyco's portfolio.

Not that the deal was a surprise; Bard's sale had been rumored for years with Johnson & Johnson often mentioned as a potential acquirer. Conventional wisdom has it that...

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