J&J/Guidant No more fears

Is Johnson & Johnson’s agreement to buy Guidant for $24bn in trouble? Guidant shares have fallen to a 10% discount to J&J’s offer price after the medical devices group offered to replace some heart implants last week. But investors may have over-reacted: the risks that the deal won’t go ahead as planned actually look slim. True, Guidant failed to tell patients or doctors about the problem when it first told regulators. But there doesn’t seem to be anything improper about this. Of the 33,000 hear...