Abbott and St. Jude Medical Broaden Alliance for Cardiovascular Products in the United States

Abbott (NYSE: ABT) and St. Jude Medical (NYSE: STJ) today announced Choice Alliance, a multi-year joint initiative that provides mutual U.S. customers access to a robust portfolio of interventional cardiology, cardiac rhythm management, electrophysiology and intravascular imaging and diagnostic technologies. This enhanced alliance, which builds upon an existing agreement between the two companies that began in 2008, includes Abbott's leading coronary and endovascular product portfolios, including the XIENCE family of everolimus eluting coronary stents, and St. Jude Medical's portfolio of electrophysiology, cardiac rhythm management and cardiology technologies, including ablation catheters, pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), leads, fractional flow reserve (FFR) lesion assessment technology and optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging products. Under the terms of the new alliance, both Abbott and St. Jude Medical will jointly promote each other's product offerings when developing contract solutions with hospital customers in the United States, enabling both companies to present a combined comprehensive cardiovascular product portfolio. In addition, a separate distribution agreement between the two companies grants Abbott the rights to distribute the St. Jude Medical ILUMIEN™ PCI Optimization System, the only integrated FFR and OCT platform, as well as the RadiAnalyzer™ Xpress Measurement System, in the United States.