Synergy Health, the Swindon-headquartered international medical sterilisation group, is to be taken over by a major US healthcare firm in a deal worth around $1.9bn (£1.18bn).
Ohio-based Steris Corporation, which provides infection prevention to clients in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and research industries, said this week it would set up a new company to undertake the acquisition. 
It has offered to pay Synergy Health shareholders 439p per share in cash and 0.4308 shares in the new company.
Synergy shareholders are expected to hold 30% of the new company with Steris stockholders holding the remaining 70%.
The new company is expected to have a combined revenue of about $2.6bn and employ about 14,000 people in 60 countries. Steris is listed on the New York Stock Exchange but the new company will be registered in the UK to reduce Steris' tax bill.
Similar moves by US firms to register in the UK and Ireland for tax purposes have been sharply criticised by US policymakers as unpatriotic. These so-called 'tax inversions' can save US firms millions of dollars in tax.
This year Steris paid tax at a rate of 31.3% in the US but registering the new business in the UK will slash this to 25%.
In August Synergy Health, which provides outsourced services ranging from hospital laundry to sterilising sophisticated medical devices, said it is investing £18m to make it the world’s largest operator of sterilisation plants for the international healthcare industry.
Synergy’s head office is on Swindon’s Windmill Hill Business Park. The head office of its Applied Sterilisation Technologies division is on Swindon’s Elgin Industrial Estate and it also operates an electron beam sterilisation plant and microbiological services laboratory at South Marston.
Synergy Health was founded in 1991 by CEO Dr Richard Steeves through the introduction of surgical packs to reduce the rate of HIV infection in operating theatres. Today it is listed on the London Stock Exchange as a FTSE-250 company and operates from more than 115 sites worldwide. It acquired Swindon-based sterlisation group Isotron in 2007 and later moved its head office to the town.
Steris can trace its history back to 1894 with the founding of American Sterilizer Company, a long-time, global leading innovator of sterilisation products
Today it is the world’s pre-eminent infection prevention, decontamination, and surgical and critical care company, with a long list of first-to-market products and industry-leading service innovations and thousands of customers in more than 60 countries. In the UK it has offices in Leicester and Basingstoke.
Synergy shares leapt by 31.5% after the deal was unveiled on Monday. The announcement coincided with a positive trading update from Synergy.
