Panasonic Healthcare offer for Bayer diabetes device biz drops to $830M from $2.3B

The latest of nearly 5 months of speculation has Panasonic Healthcare counting on paying only $830 million for Bayer's diabetes device business it has been trying to sell off. Previous estimates had guessed a sale of up to $2.3 billion.

Bayer announced last year that it was attempting to sell off some of its peripheral businesses so it could stay focused on its life sciences drug products. Panasonic has been said to be interested in the German company's blood-glucose meters as it joins other Japan electronics companies in getting more heavily involved in the healthcare business.

The blood-glucose meters sector of pharmaceutical devices is expected to continue growing at the rate of about 10% a year along with an increase in diabetes cases. Panasonic has no brand of its own and instead has been producing the meters for Bayer and other manufacturers.

- here are the stories from Nikkei and Bloomberg