Danaher Corporation

Danaher Corporation is an American global conglomerate founded by brothers Steven and Mitchell Rales in 1984. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the company designs, manufactures, and markets medical, industrial, and commercial products and services. It has primarily grown by acquisitions, and historically has tried to maintain a very low public profile. Danaher was one of the first companies in North America to adopt the Kaizen principles to manufacturing, which is a lean manufacturing Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement and elimination of waste.

Early years
The company's origins go back to a Massachusetts real estate investment trust organized in 1969 as DMG, Inc. In 1978, DMG, Inc. was reorganized as a Florida corporation and changed its name to Diversified Mortgage Investors, Inc. DMG had been invested in retirement home developments when it was taken over by the Rales, and in 1984, the company adopted the name Danaher and reincorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law. It was named after Danaher Creek in Western Montana, where the brothers conceptualized it while fishing.

In June 1986, Danaher purchased Chicago Pneumatic (CP), which had merged in July 1984 with a sister company, the Jacobs Manufacturing Co. (Jacobs), and which had purchased Matco Tools Corp. (MTC) in April 1981.

In June 1987, Danaher sold CP while retaining Jacobs, including its Matco Tools Division. Jacobs' name was changed to Matco Tools Corp. In November 1991, the other divisions within Jacobs were established as separate operating companies. In January 1993, Danaher formed NMTC, Inc., which acquired a substantial portion of the assets of MTC, including the existing distributorship agreements of MTC.

Within two years of Danaher's founding in 1984, Danaher acquired 12 companies as part of a strategy to enter the manufacturing business. Therefore, in 1986, Danaher added Qualitrol to its instrumentation unit. The unit also included Gilbarco Veeder-Root's underground fuel storage sensors, Dynapar's motion sensors and Qualitrol's pressure and temperature measurement instruments, used on the electrical transformer industry.

The Danaher Motion group acquired Kollmorgen, of Radford, Virginia.

1990–2000
In 1990, Danaher acquired Easco Hand Tools Inc. Danaher was selected as exclusive supplier of handtools for Sears. In 1994, Danaher acquired the tool company Armstrong Tools, the makers of tool brands Armstrong, Allen, and others. In 1995 Danaher acquired German components manufacturer Hengstler, a leading manufacturer of counters, printers, relays, and high-precision rotational sensors. Hengstler was Danaher's first acquisition on the European mainland, and the first operating company headquartered outside the United States. Since 1999, Danaher has owned 100% of Hach, broadening the portfolio of chemical, mainly water and wastewater, analytics also with the German company Lange.

2001–2010
Danaher acquired Trojan Technologies, an environmental engineering firm, in 2004.

UK-based West Instruments provides control and measurement instrumentation and services for the global industrial and process markets. German instrumentation manufacturer PMA was added to the Industrial Controls Group in 2005 and enhances the range of control and measurement instrumentation.

In July 2005, Danaher announced a definitive agreement to acquire Leica Microsystems. Leica manufactures a broad range of products for numerous applications requiring microscopic imaging, measurement and analysis. It also offers management systems in the areas of Life Science including biotechnology and medicine, as well as the science of raw materials and industrial quality assurance.

In early 2007 Danaher acquired Australian Pathology Instrument and Engineering company Vision Systems Limited. Also in 2007, Danaher made its largest acquisition to date, the purchase of Tektronix, Inc. for US$2.85 billion.

ChemTreat was acquired by Danaher in 2007 as well.

In 2009 Danaher purchased the Analytical Technologies business unit of Canadian Life Sciences company MDS, Inc. for US$650 million. In a separate, but related transaction, Danaher agreed with Life Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: LIFE) to acquire the remaining 50% ownership position in AB SCIEX for US$450 million, leaving Danaher as outright owner of AB SCIEX and Molecular Devices. The aggregate purchase price for the combined transactions is $1.1 billion.

2011–2020
In 2011, Danaher acquired Beckman Coulter and sold Accu-sort to Datalogic.

In October 2012, Danaher and Cooper Industries agreed to sell their joint venture, Apex Tool Group, to Bain Capital for a fee of around $1.6 billion. In December 2012 Danaher Corporation acquired Navman Wireless, a provider of on-demand fleet and asset management technology.

In September 2014, Danaher announced its intention to buy Nobel Biocare for $2.2 billion. In October 2014, Danaher Corp announced it would be combining its communications unit with NetScout Systems. The action was completed in July 2015

In May 2015, Danaher announced the acquisition of Pall Corporation for $13.8 billion, which was completed in August 2015.

In June 2016, Danaher spun off several subsidiaries, including Matco and AMMCO-COATS, to create Fortive. In September of the same year, the company announced it would acquire Cepheid for $4 billion (including debt).

In October 2016, Danaher Corporation acquired Phenomenex for $700 million to expand its life sciences space.

In October 2017, Danaher announced the acquisition of scientific informatics company ID Business Solutions Ltd. (IDBS). It was announced that IDBS would become part of Danaher's Life Sciences platform.

In 2017, Danaher recorded $18.3 billion in revenue.

In March 2018, the business announced it would acquire Integrated DNA Technologies for an undisclosed price.

In July 2018, Danaher announced its intention to spin off its $2.8 billion Dental segment into an independent publicly traded company. They named Amir Aghdaei, who at the time was President of Danaher's Dental Platform, to be President and CEO of the new company upon completion of the transaction. The corporate spin-off was completed in December 2019, with the new company called Envista Holdings Corporation.

In October 2019, Danaher announced it has signed an agreement to sell its biomolecular characterization, chromatography hardware and resins, microcarriers and particle validation standards businesses to Sartorius AG for approximately $750 million. The combined revenue of the businesses was approximately $140 million in 2018.

In 2019, Danaher was ranked by Forbes as one of the best employers for diversity.

On Monday, March 2, 2020, Dr. Stephen Hahn, the F.D.A.'s commissioner, said that the agency had taken actions to allow private labs and companies to begin making their own coronavirus tests in order to greatly expand the U.S. capacity to test for the virus. Hahn went on to note, "There will be—the estimates we're getting from industry right now, by the end of this week, close to a million tests will be able to be performed." The following morning, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services noted that Dr. Hahn was referring to tests being produced by an outside manufacturer, Integrated DNA Technologies. IDT is a division of Danaher which was acquired in early 2019.

In March 2020, Danaher acquired the biopharma business of the General Electric Life Sciences division for $21.4 billion and was named Cytiva. Danaher had to sell off part of its life sciences businesses to Sartorius to satisfy the Federal Trade Commission regulatory requirement for the acquisition. Cytiva is a global provider of technologies and services related to the development, manufacture, and delivery of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics to customers in organizations including academia, biotechnology, and drug manufacturing. The Cytiva name stems from 'cyto' meaning 'cell' in Greek, and 'iva' a Latin suffix meaning 'doing' and 'capable of'.

In May 2020, it was announced that Tom Joyce would retire as CEO of the company. He was replaced by Executive Vice President Rainier Blair on September 1, 2020.

2021–present
In September 2022, it was announced that Pall Life Sciences will be merging with Cytiva to create a new Biotechnology Group within Danaher. The merger was completed in May 2023. As of May 2023, Cytiva employed more than 16,000 associates in over 40 countries.

Also in September 2022, Danaher announced its intention to spin-off its Environmental & Applied Solutions segment in Q4 2023. On February 8, 2023, Danaher announced that the new company is named Veralto Corporation and will be headed by Danaher Executive Vice President Jennifer Honeycutt as Veralto's President and CEO. On September 30, Danaher announced the separation completion of Veralto and that Veralto will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on October 2 under the symbol "VLTO."

In November 2022, a dispute between Pantone and Adobe resulted in the removal of Pantone color coordinates from Photoshop and Adobe's other design software, causing colors in graphic artists' digital documents to be replaced with black unless artists paid Pantone a separate $15 monthly subscription fee. This move drew flak from artists who accused Pantone and Adobe of holding their work hostage. UK artist Stuart Semple responded by releasing FREETONE, a freeware clone of Pantone's color lists for use with Adobe's software.

On 28 August 2023, Danaher announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Abcam for approximately $5.7 billion at $24 per share in cash.

In April 2024, Precision Nanosystems was merged into Cytiva. In June, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted marketing approval to Danaher's Cepheid unit for a rapid test for hepatitis C. Using a blood sample from a fingertip, the rapid test detects the virus's RNA and delivers results in less than roughly an hour, as opposed to requiring a sample to be sent to a lab.

Controversies
Controversy has arisen regarding the pricing of test cartridges manufactured by Danaher's subsidiary, Cepheid. These cartridges are essential for detecting diseases such as COVID-19, HIV, and tuberculosis. Organizations such as Treatment Action Group and Doctors Without Borders have been asking Cepheid to lower the price of these tests since 2019.

On September 12, 2023, author and vlogger John Green released a video highlighting these ethical concerns and calling on his community to reach out to Danaher. One week later, Cepheid and Danaher announced a 20% price reduction for their Xpert MTB/RIF TB test cartridge, from $9.98 to $7.97 in high TB-burden countries. However, their Xpert MTB/XDR test used to diagnose for drug-resistant TB, which is the deadliest form, remained unchanged at $14.90.

Life sciences

 * Abcam
 * Aldevron
 * Beckman Coulter Life Sciences
 * IDBS
 * Integrated DNA Technologies
 * Leica Microsystems
 * Molecular Devices
 * Pall Corporation
 * Phenomenex
 * SCIEX

Diagnostics

 * Beckman Coulter Diagnostics
 * Cepheid
 * HemoCue
 * Leica Biosystems
 * Mammotome
 * Radiometer

Biotechnology

 * Cytiva
 * Precision Nanosystems

Source:

Former
Danaher tool group was combined with Cooper and aquired by Bain Capital, forming APEX Tools in 2011/2012. Some of the companies in this group included:
 * Armstrong Tools
 * Chicago Pneumatic
 * Joslyn Clark

Tests and measurement
This segment was spun off as Fortive Corporation in July 2016.
 * Gems Sensors & Controls
 * Hengstler
 * Dynapar
 * Fluke Corporation
 * Qualitrol
 * Tektronix
 * Kollmorgen (spun to Altra Industrial Motion, now part of Regal Rexnord)
 * Jacobs Vehicle Systems (spun to Altra Motion, now part of Cummins Inc.)
 * Matco Tools (now part of Vontier Corporation)
 * Teletrac (now part of Vontier Corporation)
 * Gilbarco (now part of Vontier Corporation)

Dental
This segment was spun off as Envista Holdings Corporation in December 2019.
 * KaVo (now part of Planmeca)
 * Kerr
 * Implant Direct
 * Orascoptic
 * Ormco
 * Nobel Biocare

Environmental and applied solutions
This segment was spun off as Veralto Corporation in September 2023.
 * Esko
 * Hach
 * X-Rite
 * Pantone
 * Foba Laser Alltec GmbH
 * Videojet
 * Laetus GmbH
 * ChemTreat
 * Trojan Technologies
 * LINX
 * Aquatic Informatics