Dear customers!

I am fine, I feel ready to tackle anything. Nevertheless, during the past two years, I have reflected much on the future of EUROIMMUN after the end of my active professional life. How is it possible to lead the company into a secure future? Looking at the circle of our inventive and motivated executives, who, with all their diligence and creativity, have established a variety of technologies and such an ingenious spectrum of products, and who lead our fresh-minded, bright, talented and friendly colleagues, I need not fear about the distant future – provided that EUROIMMUN does not fall into the wrong hands after my retirement.

There is a risk that EUROIMMUN will once becoming prey to financial investors who are not the least interested in diagnostic products and medical advance, and who might not have an eye for the interests of the employees or the regions where our subsidiaries are located. EUROIMMUN is highly regarded worldwide and several other companies have a great interest in a takeover. A competing company would try to gain a majority and then let individual large divisions of the company die off – just to eliminate a fellow competitor. The company might also be filleted by picking out the most profitable sections and abandoning the remainder – especially research, development and corporate culture.

I would therefore prefer to entrust the company to proven experts, who, according to my assessment, are capable of ensuring the continued existence of what we have successfully built up over the past 30 years. We have found these experts in PerkinElmer, a renowned company of global significance, which is headquartered in Boston, USA, but has also some prosperous divisions located in Germany. PerkinElmer was founded in 1931 and has been known to me since my doctoral dissertation (1971 to 1975) as a sound, technology-oriented enterprise. It has 9,000 employees and generates an annual revenue of 2.1 billion dollars. PerkinElmer focuses on laboratory diagnostics and is, for example, market leader in the field of newborn screening for metabolic disorders.

As there is no competitive situation between PerkinElmer and EUROIMMUN, one need not fear that the corporate merger will entail the closure of individual departments. In addition, we have identified many projects allowing us to cooperate for our mutual advantage. In particular, PerkinElmer would like to benefit from our engineering skills, because there is nothing comparable in the world. The production sites will also be maintained, not least those in China, and not a single job is subject to negotiation! Likewise, we will strive to retain our established network of proven distributors.

I expect that the diagnostics which we have implemented, will be maintained, our ideas won’t be forgotten and our employees will continue to fulfill their tasks in Germany and at our international sites on a long-term basis, including creative research, development, production and sales.

For my part, I will keep my job as CEO for a few more years and, in parallel, continue to run (independently) our diagnostic laboratory (Clinical Immunological Laboratory Prof. Dr. Winfried Stöcker). A nice successor is currently becoming acquainted with this work and might someday replace me, but only in a few years’ time.

Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. med. Winfried Stöcker