SANTA CLARA, CA-The proposed acquisition of Excel Technology (East Setauket, NY) announced last February has fallen through after the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) issued a prohibition order to Coherent nixing the deal. The acquisition had previously been approved by antitrust authorities in the United States. Although Coherent had offered multiple remedy proposals to the FCO, none were acceptable.
“We honestly thought the acquisition as in the last stages of approval and that the worst-case scenario was that Coherent would have had to sell off one of its two laser businesses post-acquisition,” said John Harmon, an analyst with Needham & Co. (New York, NY). “The sticking point centered on the low-power CO2 laser market, which we believe is approximately $100 million and which the combination of Coherent’s business and Excel’s Synrad division would have dominated. There are, however, two German CO2-laser vendors who could have developed lower-power lasers, and there are other U.S. CO2 laser makers as well as numerous other alternative laser technologies.”