My fondest memory of BD was seeing it in my rear-view mirror for the last time

Mine too! My other last fond memory is seeing the backs of the arrogant control freaks that I would never have to be a slave to again.

You forgot the blood glucose monitor market. They ran that into the ground as well.

"The parking lot is the most impressive aspect of this company."

I wholeheartedly disagree! It's the road that leads away from this gateway to hell.

My fondest memory of BD was seeing it in my rear-view mirror for the last time.

God I'm so happy I'm out of there and away from the 'same shit, different day' proles and inept, laughable, Prozac gulping, limp dick 'leadership'. BD - a ridiculous but malevolent bus stop in my brief time on this blue marble...

The parking lot is the most impressive aspect of this company.

You think?

This makes BD appear to be a bad place to work.

Does POS stand for Point of Service or Piece of S#!+? Since the thread is about BD, I'd presume the latter...

Vince has been bringing POS acquisitions to the table for years. Most get bought, but alas there have been some REALLY stupid ones that have been begrudgingly let go.

You'd think the guys who did the cleaning up after the acquisition would have a clue and raise some flags. I guess for BD it takes 3 years to figure things out. I would say you get what you pay for but in the case of Accuri they did not.

A lot of marketing people have left/fled/been forced out. Cleaning out the deadwood? What gives?

Upstream you must swim, grasshopper. The biggest fish know where to hide.

Hmmmm....then why did the executors of the "plan" just get executed?

Give that dog a bone! Take you a long time to figure that one out?

Maybe the strategy was just to take Accuri " out" so they never really expected significant sales?

Relative to potential sales, the purchase price of Accuri was ridiculously high.

Just like the management team that led the acquisition......hopelessly high...

I thought accuri acquisition was a good move?

No one get's fired at BD for bad judgement. People get fired for not ass kissing or politicking.
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You're not allowed to have a judgment or opinion, remember? Your professional expertise, opinions and knowledge are NOT ppreciated. Just your degree - esp if you are a young woman with an MBA. AND if you don't brown nose and be a YES man...you are OUT with a small paper trail called PIP

No one get's fired at BD for bad judgement. People get fired for not ass kissing or politicking.

Didn't their CEO sanction the deal as one of his first acts? I guess stuff flows downhill.

I heard that the M&A team at Becton who drove the acquisition of Accuri have all been fired because of terrible judgment and lack of due diligence.

They deserve to be fired, I can tell you that much.

Word on the street is that this was the smartest BD acquisition to date and the Geniuses involved in the "DEAL" are being rewarded for their brilliance.

Keen Insight plus Due Diligence equals Pure Synergy....

The worst is yet to come.

ield service and no product development, just being ignored to death. Look at Tripath, now Womens Health and Cancer. Just laid off its entire R&D staff, before it had developed any actual successful produ william

ield service and no product development, just being ignored to death. Look at Tripath, now Womens Health and Cancer. Just laid off its entire R&D staff, before it had developed any actual successful produ

BD has all of it's customers in their pocket..I.e NIH.

How about Blue Ocean Biomedical? They showed a novel integrated sample prep and flow analyzer at Cyto 2010 last year with a interesting razor/razor blade approach.

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Ideas stolen from Beckman Coulter (check out where their marketing folks came from). Execution is as poor as always.

Any idea what is happening to Accuri post acquisition? Heard a lot of sales folks got laid off. BD general manager just announced some thinly disguised message about a new platform, probably to slow down bleeding cash from the sale of existing C6. Are they trying to sink it to maintain positive growth for the real cytometers?

Brad came in and did what everyone else was afraid of doing. He came in and got the job done and released two important products. BC has other issues that will soon be addressed.

How about Blue Ocean Biomedical? They showed a novel integrated sample prep and flow analyzer at Cyto 2010 last year with a interesting razor/razor blade approach.

Definitely Guava...

Wow, I never thought they'd go off the deep end that badly. $205 million for Accuri? This is BDB's biggest screwup EVER. BR must have had an orgasm when he approved the deal.

Next comes Accuris integration into Becton Dickinson business processes which will tie them in knots for years. Flow sales guys won't push the box because the commish on a $50K sale is too small plus they don't know the customers who would buy at this price point and don't want to know them. In a couple of years Accuri site will be closed and the box will be a catalog product. Then it will just disappear.

Meanwhile we still don't have any antibody IP. Just sell the same clones you can buy anywhere else with the same dyes everybody else uses. Cell Analysis has the whole razor/razor-blade thing backwards. Thinks selling razors is the way to make money. Miltenyi is not a target. Has told BD to take a hike more years in a row than I can remember. Miltenyi laughs at BD.

Another Biometric Imaging, remember that one?

Wow, I never thought they'd go off the deep end that badly. $205 million for Accuri? This is BDB's biggest screwup EVER. BR must have had an orgasm when he approved the deal.

Next comes Accuris integration into Becton Dickinson business processes which will tie them in knots for years. Flow sales guys won't push the box because the commish on a $50K sale is too small plus they don't know the customers who would buy at this price point and don't want to know them. In a couple of years Accuri site will be closed and the box will be a catalog product. Then it will just disappear.

Meanwhile we still don't have any antibody IP. Just sell the same clones you can buy anywhere else with the same dyes everybody else uses. Cell Analysis has the whole razor/razor-blade thing backwards. Thinks selling razors is the way to make money. Miltenyi is not a target. Has told BD to take a hike more years in a row than I can remember. Miltenyi laughs at BD.

Sucks for customers. Just by getting a quote from Stratedigm, you can pressure BD to drop the price of their LSRs by $100k...

The Accuri deal: http://www.xconomy.com/detroit/2011/03/30/accuri-exit-showers-michigan-w...

don't forget Miltenyi (MACSquant etc) as an M&A target

So let me get this straight. Guava raises around $30M, develops and sells a ~$50,000 benchtop flow cytometer, and ends up selling out to Millipore for around $20M. Accuri raises around $30M, develops and sells a ~$50,000 benchtop flow cytometer, and ends up selling to BD for $205M? Who is the bigger chump in this story... Guava, or BD?

Other instrument companies that were at CYTO2010 and possible acquisition targets at some point -- what are your thoughts on these:

- Stratedigm (as already pointed out)
- Amnis
- Cytonome
- Cyntellect
- Partec

Anyone else?

Good News for Stratedigm and other small companies (10X multiple on revenue). What other small companies are up for grabs in this space?

Just read 205M for Accuri...

And the VP who pushed the deal through collects his LTI and PIP and buys another vacation home. And we continue to blame our lack of innovation on the "little people", who must pay for their failure with 1s and 2s on performance raitings.

Wow, you hit it right on the nose. Wish more people there would wake up and get out. Trust me, there is life outside of BD - LOL

Which comment was this a reply to?

And the VP who pushed the deal through collects his LTI and PIP and buys another vacation home. And we continue to blame our lack of innovation on the "little people", who must pay for their failure with 1s and 2s on performance raitings.

Wow, you hit it right on the nose. Wish more people there would wake up and get out. Trust me, there is life outside of BD - LOL

So the acoustic focusing is not revolutionizing flow as promised?

I wonder if LIFE has fiqured out that Elling has screwed them yet?

*What, life already burned that money AND has NO SALES whatsoever on that Attune nightmare.*

Technically it was more like 80 million. I suppose if you are going to throw away money 30 is better than 80.

So the acoustic focusing is not revolutionizing flow as promised?

"The funny thing is that most at BD realize that the acquisitions are bad before they take place. Associates who know better all keep their mouth shut during the due diligence. Expressing a dissenting view could be bad for one's career at BD."

So true. I have seen four or five nickel and dime acquisitions since I came to work at Becton Dickinson, and all have been obvious face-palms from day 1. The amazing thing is that the rocket scientists who drive these disasters are never made to answer for them. After a year or two the bad acquisition just melts away. We don't talk about it anymore. People get laid off but that's never announced, they just disappear. And the VP who pushed the deal through collects his LTI and PIP and buys another vacation home. And we continue to blame our lack of innovation on the "little people", who must pay for their failure with 1s and 2s on performance raitings.

****Burned $30 million to sell 500 units, all BD has to do is figure out how to sell the underperforming box for $80k and they may break even. Even Life was smart enough to not fall for that.****

What, life already burned that money AND has NO SALES whatsoever on that Attune nightmare.

The funny thing is that most at BD realize that the acquisitions are bad before they take place. Associates who know better all keep their mouth shut during the due diligence. Expressing a dissenting view could be bad for one's career at BD.

Does anyone know how much BD paid to buy Accuri?

More than it was worth.

Does anyone know how much BD paid to buy Accuri?

Burned $30 million to sell 500 units, all BD has to do is figure out how to sell the underperforming box for $80k and they may break even. Even Life was smart enough to not fall for that.