General Electric to acquire InVision

March 18, 2004 WILTON, Conn. - A division of General Electric has agreed to acquire InVision Technologies for approximately $900 million. The acquisition will allow GE Infrastructure to merge technologies with InVision, a high-technology provider of infrastructure security systems, as well as expand the company’s business reach into arenas such as explosive detection and security technologies. GE’s interest in InVision stemmed from the company’s advanced development of computed tomography scanning technology. “InVision has a very strong set CT scanning technology for baggage,” said Jeff DeMarrais, a spokesperson for GE. “If you couple that with GE’s Ion Track trace detection capabilities there are some great opportunities for complementary technologies.” Although GE has a background in CT through its GE Healthcare arm, its application is different from the version InVision pioneered in 1990. The acquisition will allow both businesses to explore each other’s expertise. “We can learn from each other and share technologies,” DeMarrais said. The transaction’s official closing date is scheduled for March 2005, but GE anticipates it to occur sooner - sometime in the second half of this year. Once the deal is finalized, an integration team will be installed to decide upon the structure of upper management. Notice of the acquisition was released March 15, the same day it was announced that InVision had won a contract to provide its CTX bomb-detection machines to a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. For more on this story, see the May issue of Security Systems News.