Coffee Break – Germans Clear Medtronic Buyout of Kyphon

German antitrust authorities have cleared medical device maker Medtronic’s bid to buy rival Kyphon, the companies announced Wednesday.

The green light in Europe’s biggest economy is a good sign for the deal, which received approval from U.S. authorities earlier this month.

Medtronic, a Minneapolis-based firm with its spinal surgery unit in Memphis, is offering $71 per share, or roughly $3.9 billion, to buy Sunnyvale, Calif.-based spine surgery firm Kyphon Inc.

Kyphon specializes in surgical devices used to repair spinal compression fractures, painful injuries that are common in the elderly.

Medtronic has similar products, but hopes to capitalize on what it sees as a fast-growing market by acquiring Kyphon.

The deal still faces scrutiny from other foreign regulators and an Oct. 16 vote by Kyphon shareholders.

Also this week, Medtronic introduced a new spine surgery system called the CD Horizon Longitude.

The systems allows doctors to fuse several vertebrae at a time while making only a small incision.

The company said the device will prevent doctors from having to make long cuts through skin and muscles in certain spine surgeries.

In harmony with nature

If you want to see what’s possible when it comes to building subdivisions and preserving trees, take a look at The Pinnacle of Germantown on Poplar Avenue at Old Dogwood.

The 16-lot development, built by Doug Dickens of Boyle Investment Co., captured top honors from the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council for preserving the environment and old-growth trees.

The subdivision was carved out of the Taylor family homestead, a wooded 18-acre parcel within the Germantown city limits.

Boyle worked with landscape architects at Dalhoff Thomas Daws and experts at Davis Engineering, both Memphis firms, to design a layout that preserved 565 trees and several acres of open space along three streams.

Only 20 percent of the site was disturbed – which included 62 trees.

NWA e-tickets take off

Northwest Airlines Wednesday became the first airline in the world with 100 interline electronic ticket agreements, the savvy arrangements with other carriers that let passengers use a single e- ticket through all legs of a trip.

The effort is part of International Air Transport Associations’s goal to eliminate paper tickets by next June.

Northwest has e-ticketing available on 99.9 percent of all air travel within the United States and 99.2 percent of ticketing with its international partners.

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Well said

Og Mandino:

“The only certain means is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.”

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Originally published by The Commercial Appeal .

(c) 2007 Commercial Appeal, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.