Capio owned Nova Medical acquires 50% of Professional Genetics Laboratory

Capio owned Nova Medical acquires 50% of Professional Genetics Laboratory Nova Medical acquired 50% of Professional Genetics Laboratory in Uppsala from Beijer & Alma today. Operations consist mainly of pharmaceuticals tests for the medical industry. The company has an annual net sale of around SEK 5 mil- lion and 12 employees. Nova Medical is taking over the entire managerial responsibility. Professional Genetics Laboratory works with modern molecular biological methods. Customer base consists largely of tests for the pharmaceuticals industry, which is constantly demanding modern analysis methods. The com- pany's operations will be combined with Nova Medical and the latter will take over corporate management. The agreement provides an opportunity to acquire the remaining 50% of the share capital in 2003. "-This is a part of our initiative to build up expertise within future di- agnostic measures. PGL's molecular biological methods are modern clinical analyses that we believe offer great future growth potential," says Bengt Belfrage, President and CEO of Nova Medical AB and Head of Business Area Laboratories, Capio. Nova Medical is a European leader within Laboratory Medicine with opera- tions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Poland. Nova has laboratories in several hospitals and primary health care centres as well as well-established units for the clinical testing of pharmaceuticals. Approximately 8.7 million analyses are carried out annu- ally. At the present time, Nova has 700 employees, some 40 of which are specialist doctors and the rest mainly biomedical analysts. Nova Medical is part of Capio's Business Area Laboratories, which has an annual net sale of around SEK 500 million. Gothenburg 21 December 2000 Capio AB (publ) For more information please contact: Bengt Belfrage, President & CEO, Nova Medical AB and Head of Business Area Laboratories, Capio AB +46 31 732 41 01 +46 70 516 32 45 Ulrika Stenson, Vice President Corporate Communications, Capio AB +46 31 77 32 40 04 +46 70 590 07 23 ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/12/21/20001221BIT00060/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/12/21/20001221BIT00060/bit0002.pdf