II-VI completes the acquisition of Coherent

The combined business will be more distributed across the value chain from materials to components, subsystems, systems, and service. II-VI’s scale, at the levels of the value chain where expertise in materials matters, is complementary to Coherent’s scale where laser systems play.

“Coherent is an innovator with a rich portfolio of some of the most advanced technologies in the world, which have been transformative in a broad range of markets,” said Dr Vincent D Mattera Jr, chair and CEO of II-VI. “I would like to thank Andy Mattes for his leadership of Coherent and enabling a very successful integration planning process.”

Dr Mattera continued, “I am also very excited to announce a new direction for our brand: We plan for the combined company to be named Coherent. We will soon announce the date of the launch of our new brand identity. While the name Coherent has a strong association with lasers, the broader meaning of the word is ‘bringing things together’. It represents our diversity in thinking distilled into our clarity of purpose, our unity in action, and our broader sense of engagement by connection to our mission, vision, and values.

“With our foundation in materials and our unstoppable imagination, we will enable the next evolution of the cloud, 3D sensing, electric vehicles, additive manufacturing, the commercialization of space, and the personalization of health care, just to name a few. We are together on a journey towards a future that will be increasingly mobile, intelligent, and electric, accelerating the pace of innovation and enabling a stream of spectacular successes that will sustainably change the world around us,” he said. 

The combined company will serve the four markets of industrial, communications, electronics, and instrumentation, which together represent a fast-growing total addressable market of $65 billion. All four markets are growing and provide exciting opportunities for our employees to play an increasingly larger role in transforming the world. The combined company’s global workforce of over 28,000 associates in 130 locations worldwide is dedicated to the company’s enduring vision of a world transformed through innovations vital to a better life today and the sustainability of future generations.

II-VI will continue to be led by a proven leadership team that leverages the strengths of the combined company and will continue to leverage a board of directors comprised of seasoned executives and thought leaders from highly diverse industries. Stephen A. Skaggs and Sandeep S. Vij, former directors of Coherent, join the board.

The combined company will be organized into three business segments. Dr Giovanni Barbarossa will continue to serve as the chief strategy officer of the company and lead the materials segment, previously referred to as the compound semiconductors segment. Sunny Sun will continue to lead the networking segment, which was previously the photonic solutions segment. Dr Mark Sobey, formerly the COO and executive vice president of Coherent, will be the president of the new lasers segment. (Sources: II-VI / Coherent)

Further reading: Coherent to engage in discussions with II-VI, WileyIndustryNews.com, 26 February 2021