Friday, February 3, 2012

PerkinElmer picks Atlas Venture's Barrett for board seat

By Rodney H. Brown

PerkinElmer Inc. announced it will be filling an upcoming board vacancy with Peter Barrett, a partner at venture capital firm Atlas Venture.

Barrett will be named to the board to replace a current member who is reaching retirement age, the company said in a release. It did not name the retiring board member, however.

Robert F. Friel, chairman and CEO of PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI), cited Barrett’s “deep industry experience and knowledge of life sciences and analytical instrumentation” as a reason for choosing him for the board seat.

Before joining Atlas Venture in 2002, Barrett was a co-founder, executive vice president and chief business officer of Celera Genomics, the first company to successfully sequence the human genome. Previously, Barrett held senior management positions at the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among his portfolio companies at Atlas are Infacare, JenaValve, SciClone, Stromedix, Vitae and Zafgen.

In October, PerkinElmer priced a senior notes offering at $500 million, with plans to apply the proceeds to the acquisition costs of its September buyout of Hopkinton’s Caliper Life Sciences Inc.

PerkinElmer also agreed in March 2011 to pay $220 million to buy both life sciences software firm CambridgeSoft Corp. and ArtusLabs Inc. of Durham, N.C.