In a move to pay off some of its debt and better steady its business, General Electric agreed Monday to sell its biopharmaceutical company for about $21.4 billion.
“Today’s transaction is a pivotal milestone,” G.E.’s chief executive, H. Lawrence Culp Jr., said in a statement. “A more focused portfolio is the right structure for G.E., and we have many options for maximizing shareholder value along the way.”
G.E. is selling to Danaher, a conglomerate with products concentrated in the fields of design, manufacturing, and marketing of industrial, healthcare and consumer products.
The former titan of American business has struggled in recent years under a load of problems and, under a number of leaders, has slowly announced the sale or spinoff of many of its divisions, including some in finance and energy, The New York Times reported.
The biopharmaceutical division has been performing well, accounting for about $3 billion of the $20 billion in revenue that G.E.’s health care unit generated last year as a whole.
But G.E. executives said the biopharma unit was not a core part of its parent division, which focuses on making medical-imaging machines and other equipment for health care providers.
“G.E. Biopharma is renowned for providing best-in-class bioprocessing technologies and solutions,” Danaher’s chief executive, Thomas P. Joyce Jr., added in a separate statement.
Under the terms of the deal, Danaher will pay about $21 billion in cash and assume about $400 million in pension liabilities at the G.E. unit.
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