Baxter to Split Into 2 Health Care Companies

Splitsville has been a popular destination for big United States corporations of late.

Baxter International, a $38 billion market cap company, is now joining them, saying on Thursday that it would create two independent health care companies:  one in biopharmaceuticals and the other in medical products. The biopharmaceuticals business would be spun off tax free to shareholders by the middle of next year, under the company’s plan.

“Baxter has an established history of executing successful spinoffs, and we have continued to evaluate the separation of these two businesses in response to diverging business dynamics and the rapidly changing macro-environment,”  Robert L. Parkinson, Jr., Baxter’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “This decision underscores Baxter’s commitment to ensuring its long-term strategic priorities remain aligned with shareholders’ best interests, while improving our competitive position and performance, enhancing operational, commercial and scientific effectiveness and creating value for patients, healthcare providers, and other key stakeholders.”

The plan follows a similar move by Abbott Laboratories, completed last year, to separate into two publicly traded companies, one focused on diagnostics and medical devices like heart stents and the other a biopharmaceutical company, now named AbbVie.

Baxter’s biopharmaceuticals business had revenue of $6 billion last year. Its portfolio includes recombinant and plasma-based proteins to treat hemophilia and other bleeding disorders, and plasma-based therapies to treat immune deficiencies, burns and shock, and other  blood-related conditions.  Ludwig N. Hantson president of bioscience, will be named chief executive of the new company, which will be named at a later date

The medical products business, with annual sales of more than $9 billion, markets intravenous solutions and nutritional therapies, drug delivery systems, inhalation anesthetics and other products. This business includes Gambro, the Swedish maker of dialysis products and other health care equipment, which Baxter acquired in 2012 for $2.8 billion. Mr. Parkinson would be chief executive and chairman of the medical products company.

Shares of Baxter, based in Deerfield, Ill., were up sharply in pre-market trading on Thursday.