Baxter Splitting In Effort To ‘Unlock Trapped Value’
Baxter International (BAX) announced Thursday that it will split its biopharma and medical-products businesses into two separate companies by mid-2015, jump-starting its lagging stock with a move that seemed to surprise Wall Street. “We and many investors have always viewed a separation as an attractive prospect … but have mostly discounted the idea in the near term, given management’s vocal and public communications seemingly to the contrary,”