Abbott deal puts focus squarely on pharma

There's a lot of buzz being generated by Abbott Laboratories' deal to sell a big part of its diagnostics business to GE for more than $8 billion. That deal leaves Abbott much more focused on the pharmaceutical end of the business. One particularly interesting nugget from Avery Johnson's report in the Wall Street Journal: Abbott has developed its own software program to evaluate the risk and potential returns of each new research project it undertakes. Abbott is likely to need all the help it can muster as it tries to persuade analysts that the company can improve its pipeline and create new drugs to take the place of therapies losing patent protection.

- see this press release on the deal
- read the Wall Street Journal's report (sub. req.)

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