With Merck KGaA’s former electronics business lead Kai Beckmann now at the helm of the entire conglomerate, the new CEO is making his mark with a major outlay to support the company’s life sciences arm.
Merck KGaA has agreed to put up $73 per share in cash to acquire Bio-Techne Corporation, which works out to a total consideration of roughly $11.3 billion for the Minneapolis-based provider and manufacturer of life sci tools, analytical technologies and consumables. The deal marks a 36% premium on Bio-Techne’s one-month average trading price, Merck KGaA said in a June 25 release.
By merging the companies’ resources, Merck KGaA believes that it will be able to better serve clients across the industry, from those engaged in discovery and translational research, through development, testing and commercial manufacturing.
In a statement, Beckmann—who took the reins at Merck from Belén Garijo at the start of May—framed the deal as an “important milestone towards delivering on our mid- to long-term strategic agenda.”
“By combining Bio-Techne's scientific depth, innovation engine and differentiated portfolio with the global scale, manufacturing excellence and customer reach of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, we are in a strong position to address some of the most important opportunities in life sciences and support our customers in accelerating the next generation of scientific discovery and therapeutic innovation,” he added.
The deal falls under the umbrella of Merck KGaA’s life science arm, which it operates in tandem with its core healthcare and electronics units. The company’s life science unit grew sales (PDF) a little less than 1% in 2025 to reach 8.98 billion euros (around $10.19 million), with the business broadly spanning the supply of tools and materials for researchers and developers, as well as contract manufacturing and development services.
The transaction is a big splash for Merck KGaA, representing the company’s largest deal since its buyout of Sigma-Aldrich for $17 billion back in 2015. Merck KGaA said Thursday that it expects the deal to close “by late 2026 or early 2027.”
Merck KGaA is set to gain a number of assets and capabilities through the purchase, including a well-known portfolio of cytokines, growth factors, antibodies and immunoassay kits. The German healthcare and electronics firm is also gaining access to Bio-Techne’s ProteinSimple line of automated protein detection and analysis instruments, plus additional tools that could bolster Merck KGaA’s positioning in spatial biology and diagnostics.
Bio-Techne’s established position as a provider of materials, analytics and process technologies to cell therapy developers is also set to bolster the combined companies’ bottom line, in Merck’s estimation.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bio-Techne currently boasts a workforce of more than 3,000 employees, some 2,300 of whom are based in the United States. The company operates 34 sites around the world and 15 production facilities in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and China.
While a good portion of the deal seems focused on the supplier potential of Bio-Techne’s offerings, Merck KGaA did note that it believes the acquisition will be good for its process solutions business unit, too—referring specifically to its contracting services—by expanding its reach into “higher-value reagents, analytics, and cell and gene therapy workflows.” The deal also has the potential to strengthen Merck KGaA’s discovery, development and manufacturing capabilities, according to the company.
Aside from its key Sigma-Aldrich buyout, Merck KGaA has made other high-profile purchases in recent years of semiconductor materials supplier Versum for $1.4 billion in 2019 and rare disease specialist SpringWorks Therapeutics for $3.9 billion last year.
Back in September, Merck announced that Garijo—who led the German firm during the COVID-19 pandemic—would step down and pass the baton to Beckmann after five years as CEO.
Straddling both the electronics and biopharmaceuticals realms, Merck KGaA has felt especially exposed to recent geopolitical tensions between China and the West, as well as volatile trade policy stemming from the U.S. For her part, Garijo hasn’t gone far, recently assuming the top spot at nearby European drug major Sanofi in France.
Early into his tenure, Beckmann made his intentions clear, pledging on a conference call in May that Merck KGaA would “broaden our M&A scope.”
Beckmann seemed to be reflecting on Merck’s pharma business specifically, with the company’s healthcare CEO Danny Bar Zohar chiming in to note that its early- to mid-stage pipeline must be built out to go beyond the guidance the company has given out to early next decade.
“This is something that we need to start building now,” Bar Zohar said at the time.